As you meet people in
Bali,
Indonesia you will most likely start to become aware of the uncanny repetition of people's names. This is because of the steadfast Balinese conventions for
naming children.
As is the case in many
South Asian countries, Bali has a caste system. And in continuance with the fact that
any class/caste system arbitrarily falls into a pyramid structure, the majority of the people on the island are low-caste. Therefore, most of the folks you'll encounter will be named in accordance with the
low-caste standards, which are extremely straightforward with little variation from specific rules.
For starters, everyone has a brief prefix to their name that is prescribed by their gender:
I for a boy, or
Ni for a girl.
This is
simply a formality to identify them as a man or woman, therefore it is not used when the person introduces him or herself, and no one addresses people with this initial moniker. It is only used for written purposes, when the gender of the person is not readily apparent.
Their second name is the one the individual uses on a day to day basis. This name has nothing to do with
gender but is prescribed by the order in which they were born:
First child:
Wayan
Second child:
Made
Third child:
Komang or
Nyoman
Fourth child:
Ketut
If a family has more than four children, they will start over again from the top of the list, using Wayan again. It is commonplace for a family to contain more than one child named Wayan and even Made. This is where the child's third name comes into play.
Each child is eventually given their own unique name which ends up serving as their last name. The Balinese don't carry down the
father's last name throughout later generations like
Westerners traditionally do. The child's
personal name can be given them at birth, but more often they receive it as sort of a
nickname as a young child, either from schoolmates or family members, and it just sticks. Usually it is some kind of reference to their appearance or some
profound personality trait they may have. If no such nickname unravels, they may be named after an older family member or some other close older aquaintance.
Even though this personal name is unique to each child, only those people close to them know of it and use it to address them. In general they go by one of the five standard names listed above, regardless of the fact that in any given group of people there will inevitably be several men and women sharing the same names.
Now the middle and high caste naming standards are more simple. They, too, start off with either an
I or
Ni and then a second name that indicates caste:
middle caste:
Gusti
high caste:
Oka or
Agus
Then comes their personal name which they seem to use more often than the low-caste people. In some cases they have a fourth name that stems from
family lineage, representing something close to the western 'surname' although not as clearly defined.