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Chinese government’s
linguistic violence against the uigurs name
The Chinese Communists have not only changed the name
of East Turkestan, they are also imposing a system
Chinese transliteration to the spelling of Uyghur
names, creating ridiculous results.
Just as the Chinese language and culture is very
different from Uyghur language and culture, Chinese
names are also completely different from Uyghur names.
The Chinese people have not been able to spell Uyghur
names because they do not use the Latin alphabet for
spelling. Instead they use their own pinyin system of
transliterating Chinese phonetics into Latin
characters in order to spell out the Uyghur names.
This has not only changed the spelling of most Uyghur
names, but it has also resulted in ridiculous and
unacceptable pronunciations.
Uyghurs have a long history behind their names that
even predates Islam. Before Islam they had a different
kind of birth ceremony in which they would give a
party for a newborn baby and carefully choose its name.
For example, a girl would always be given a beautiful
name, like the name of a flower, a star, the moon or
the sun. Boys would be given names that symbolize
strength or genius, such as the name ‘bilge’, which
means knowledgeable. The Uyghur names would therefore
contain a lot of wishes of the parents for to their
children.
After the arrival of Islam, the Uyghurs accepted the
Islamic birth ceremony, regarding which the Prophet
Muhammad said “the aqeeqah [birth ceremony] is to be
done for a boy, so slaughter [an animal] for him and
remove the harm from him [i.e. shave his head]” (26).
When the prophet was asked about the birth ceremony,
he prescribed the slaughtering of two sheep for a boy
and one sheep for girl (27). He prescribed the
preferred time of the birth ceremony on the seventh
day after birth, although the 14th or the 21st day
after birth were also considered acceptable (28). If
none of these days were possible, then it could be
done on any day.
The change of Uyghur names into Chinese spelling by
the Chinese government is a clear abuse of the Uyghur
culture. For instance, my first name is Rukiye and my
last name is Turdush. Yet with the Chinese spelling in
all of my documents, my first name became Rukeya and
my last name became Tuerdixi, and each time that
people call me, they use this strange and funny
pronunciation. I feel discrimination and I am not
comfortable, and I dislike the Chinese domination of
our culture one more time The Chinese government did
not stop with a mere change of Uyghur names; they have
also imposed the name order in accordance with Chinese
tradition. For example, all Chinese names start with a
family name and follow with a first name, while
Uyghurs use the opposite order, as in European names.
This usually implies a specific genealogical
relationship. For example, Otkur Ekrem means ‘Otkur’
son of Ekrem. However, the Chinese government puts the
Uyghur family name before the first name on all
documents in order to be similar to the Chinese names,
causing a lot of trouble for Uyghurs. The first name
of one girl is Kamile, and the family name is Dawud,
but according to the Chinese rule her name became
Dawud Kamile, or with the Chinese spelling, it became
Daiwuti Kaimilai. Uyghurs think that Dawud is actually
her first name, which creates a lot of confusion and
inconvenience for both Kamile and others because Dawud
is actually a man’s name.
The Chinese government thinks that such linguistic
violence against the Uyghur names can help to increase
the assimilation of Uyghurs, but instead it is causing
resistance among them, and in the long term it will
cultivate more enemies for the Chinese.
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