What’s in a Name? An Ethnosemantic Study of Muslim Mosque Names in Southern Thailand

Abstract

Religious faith tends to vacillate in multicultural societies where religion influences social behavior and culture. However, this study has found a vividly different experience in Thailand’s four multicultural southern border provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkla. These areas are notable for their high level of political and religious violence. This study is conducted via an ethnosemantic approach to find out how the Islamic faith culture echoed from their mosque names remains stable in those four provinces where religious and ethnic conflict is a daily experience. The sample comprises 1,637 Muslim mosque names of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkla. Muslim mosque names used in those four provinces were collected and analyzed. It was found that Muslim mosques in the four multicultural provinces are named through varied naming strategies with Arabic, Malay dialect, and Thai, respectively and four syllabic names are mostly found. In terms of meaning, the mosque names are directly related to God (called Allah in Arabic) as well as Allah’s last savant, Prophet Muhammad. Those names are also related to good deeds, virtue, and harmony. The meanings of the names show Muslims remain faithful to Allah and his last savant despite the surrounding turmoil. However, some Thai names which are not Muslim names were also found in the study. This variant is probably due to the language contact phenomenon occurring in these four provinces.