People have had names ever since written history created, and as far back as oral history spreads. It means that not a single person knows the beginning of the history of names. As consequences, predicting how the earliest given names were selected is the conceivable thing to do.
Naming is the first mission of speech through which we set apart one person or thing from all others. Most names give the idea to have had some sort of original meaning descriptively, afore being simply a attractive assortment of sounds. The meaning of name is not always explicitly shown like the meaning of certain object, but it tends to have implicit meaning or obsession in it (Woodruff, 1995).
It also means that the name giver is in habit to find words having implied meanings which in all sorts of names led to their being regard as ideas of manners of the name bearer. Moreover, Wilson (1998), stated that names are able to classify individuals as well as define the name bearers’ social personality.A full name can consist of first name, last name, or more than two names in accordance of society agreements in which each country and ethnicity has different rules in giving their children’s name as the specific characteristics. Waters (1990) argued that using their ‘surname’ is able to shape the name bearers’ ethnic self-identi?cation, even where they are from quite mixed backgrounds. In some countries like in western countries, Korean, and Indian, there is an obligation to put the family’s name or surnames as the sign to show their class or identity. It can be placed as the first name or as the last name. For instance, South Korean put their surnames or family names as their first name like Park Chanyeol, Shon Seungwan, Lee Kwangsoo, and Kim Yerim.
Meanwhile, Indian, place the family’s name after their own name, in the other words, as their last name, for example, Kareena Kapoor, Ranee Mukherjee, Sahrukh Khan, and Priyanka Chopra. If western people, Korean, and Indian commonly have surnames to show their family roots even can showing the occupation by names, Indonesian conversely do not have particular rule to name the children. Some ethnics in Indonesia have a rule to put their family’s name to shows their identity as Indonesia’s ethnics specifically Bataknetse and Balinese but mostly not. Due to the absence of naming’s rules, Indonesia’s local names which show identity of specific ethnic of Indonesia especially among Madurese community is decimated day by day and it is replaced by names which are adopted or adapted from other languages’ words as the references in giving and making name.
Earliest Madurese names were taken from Madura vocabularies like Lenggi, Pandan, and Langkap which recently got influenced by Islamic and western words. Hence, the name of children nowadays are more complicated, difficult to spell, and has no relation with Madura language which can show their identity as Madurese. In the other words, the traditional language usage in naming children is less popular compared to other languages. It makes the names sometimes sound like western names and sometimes sounds like Arabic names.The previous related study concerning on the trend of naming baby entitled ‘From Karen to Katie: Using Baby Names to Understand Cultural Evolution’ by Berger, Bradlow, Braunstein, & Zhang (2012) examines how the admiration of that name’s component phonemes in other names in the previous year affect the popularity of naming for baby. This research was using more than 100 years of first-name data which concluded that popular names are influenced by the booming phenomena recently. It influences individual choices which in turn to form the joint patterns that affect the future choices of other individuals, and consequently cultural evolution.
Besides, the previous study emphasized on the naming baby rules had been conducted by Indonesian researchers. One of them is written by Zulfiana Amaliana (2016) entitled ‘Akulturasi Budaya dalam Pemberian Nama Anak pada Keluarga Perkawinan Campuran antara Suku Bali dan Non-Bali di Desa Kalibukbuk san Desa Gerokgak Kabupaten Buleleng’. This study was provided full and thorough overview of the structures of names of intermarriage’s children who parents are Balinese and non-Balinese in Gerokgak and Kalibukbuk villages. It concludes that there is a shift in naming the children specifically when intermarriage between non-Balinese men and Balinese women. Meanwhile, if the men are Balinese, they tend to maintain to give their children name containing Balinese culture. This research will focus in the Madurese community which does not have specific rule agreements in naming their children.
Seeing the decimation of local name among Madurese community phenomenon, the researcher interests to investigate what types of name used by Madurese community recently, what parents’ considerations in choosing names for their children are, and the children’s perception towards the given names whether they like it or not.
