Building Names in Singapore: Multilingualism of a Different Kind

Abstract

There has been much discussion about the ideological or political underpinnings of toponyms, e.g., \nFaraco and Murphy (1997) on Spain, Cohen and Kliot (1992) on the Israeli administered territories, \nNash (1999) on the Irish Republic or Yeo (1992, 1996) on Singapore. The Israeli, Irish and \nSingaporean examples are different from the Spanish one in that the struggle is also expressed \nlinguistically through the form of the names chosen. Yeo (1996) notes the preference for street names \nbased on the Malay language in the 1960s as an expression of Singaporean political independence. In \nthis paper, I examine the names given to residential buildings (condominiums) in Singapore: what \nkinds of names are used and the reasons for any patterns discerned. While street names are usually \ntightly controlled by municipal boards, building names are usually given freer rein, although they \nwould still need governmental approval. Building names would therefore reflect the attitudes of the \ncommercially powerful rather than those of the politically powerful. In the context of the Singaporean \nstate ideology of multilingualism (Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin \nChinese and Tamil) and multiracialism (and therefore multiculturalism), it might therefore be expected \nthat the multilingual nature of the community might also be expressed in the building names accorded. \nThe official languages are clearly not equal based on their degree of representation. Also of note is the \npresence of languages such as French and Spanish which do not form a part of the normal linguistic \nrepertoire of a Singaporean.

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