But seriously, are all Eurasians; really Eurasians? My bet is that not all of them are. Don't be fooled by certain individuals who profess the Christian faith (especially Roman Catholicism), having surnames like Sta Maria, Fernandez, Gomez and some other Anglicised names at the end, to be Eurasians just because they say so. If you do, you are hopelessly naive.
Many who are Christians and have English sounding names are in fact, different race altogether. In actual fact, these people can only trace their ancestry to a vast country in South Asia. Their forefathers came to Malaya as menial labourers and peons. Majority of them were classless in the caste system, something tied to their religion. As long as they followed the religion they were born into, they would be treated as outcasts by their brethrens who occupy higher strata in the highly discriminating caste system. To escape such an identity marker, some converted to Christianity where the caste system is not present. But just converting to a foreign religion is not enough, they had to completely change their names too. And so they changed their names and adopted the English sounding ones. After changing religion and names, what's left for them to do was to call themselves Eurasians and that's what they did.
4 comments:
Wow! I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing.
Well, conversion to Christianity & the name change that came with it was a God-sent, literally.
A result of missionary activities in late 19th and early 20th centuries, you'll see their descendants in many Catholic churches, especially in Klang.
To me, it was a golden opportunity to shed ages-old discriminative practices and to start afresh, spiritually as well as socio-economically, so why not? Would you call them pseudo-Eurasian?
Note: A way to determine if one is, is by the surname/last name, which normally lacks the alphabet 'S' vis-a-vis their European namesakes e.g. Michael versus Michaels, Robert versus Roberts, Jacob versus Jacobs, etc.
Related: There is also another subgroup that arose in colonial Melaka and Penang - the Tamil Peranakans or Chittis which, parallel to the Chinese variety (language only Malay, fusion food, localized attire but retained Hindu religious traditions), are the progenies of subcontinental Tamils with local Malays. However, their numbers were small and today the vast majority of them has assimilated into the 'regular' Tamil/South Indian population.
Cheers.
Most South Asians actually do have some European ancestry from ancient migrations from Europe to India. Much Indian language, culture and religion is ancient European in origin too.
Nearly all human beings today trace their ancestry to the Africans. So, going by that logic; we are Africans.
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