Chinese Indonesian surname

Many ethnic Chinese people have lived in Indonesia for many centuries. Over time, especially under social and political pressure during the New Order era, most Chinese Indonesians have adopted names that better match the local language.

History of Chinese Indonesian surnames

Colonial era until 1965

During the Dutch colonial era, the Dutch administration recorded Chinese names in birth certificates and other legal documents using an adopted spelling convention that was based primarily on Hokkien (Southern Min), the language of the majority of Chinese immigrants in the Dutch East Indies. The administrators recorded the names using the nearest Dutch spelling derived from Hokkien words, which was simplified into Ejaan Lama (lit. 'old spelling').

A similar thing happened in the British Malaya, where the British administrators record the names using English spelling. The spellings of names in the British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies varied because English and Dutch employed distinct spellings for identical sounds. Furthermore, as Hokkien romanization standards did not exist then, some Romanized names varied slightly.

The spelling convention survived through the Japanese occupation (1942–1945) well into Indonesian independence (1945) and sovereignty acknowledgment by the Dutch government (1949). Since the independent Indonesian government inherited the Dutch legal system, it also survived until 1965 in Sukarno's presidential era.

The Indonesian government later began changing Indonesian spelling to harmonize it with the spelling used for Malay in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, first under the Ejaan Soewandi introduced in 1947, and again under Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan (lit. 'perfected spelling') adopted in 1972.