Changing Indonesian Sea Names Ferjan Ormeling Utrecht University Introduction Foreign influence on Indonesian toponymy is negligible. Names that are demonstra- bly of foreign origin are only a handful. Examples are the names Flores, Enggano and Rondo, which are of Portuguese origin; some names of mountain ranges in the interior of Borneo still show the influence of German explorers. The names of two prominent cities, Batavia and Buitenzorg, were decolonised and changed into Jakarta and Bogor (Batavia referred to the Batavi, a Germanic tribe living in the Netherlands in Roman times; Buitenzorg is the Dutch equivalent of the French name Sanssoucis). But, overall, the namescape in Indonesia is an Indonesian one. Underneath the layer of Indonesian names, however, there are still foreign influences, masked because they have been translated into Bahasa Indonesia (the Indonesian language), or because Indonesian names were used by foreigners. As far as I have been able to assess there was no indigenous tradition in naming specific water bodies, apart from the South Sea (Samudra Kidul or Laut Kidul) and the naming of Indonesian seas thus was due to foreign or colonial intervention. Sources My sources in finding out the chronology of this sea naming process have been maps and charts, geographical descriptions and pilots or nautical guides as available through Google Books. No Indonesian literature could be found on the subject. I have studied old printed maps of Southeast Asia, in order to find out when specific names were first used, and also manuscript maps: a recent source (2010) is the book Sailing for the East, by Schilder and Kok from the Explokart Research Group at Utrecht University, which presents an overview of all the manuscript charts on vellum produced for the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Dutch nautical guides for this area were only printed in 1753, because of secrecy considerations. The Dutch East India Company wanted to preserve its trading monopoly for this area. The pilot book annex sea-atlas of these waters produced on behalf of the VOC was volume 6 of the Nieuwe Groote ligtende zee-fakkel (The New Great Shining Sea Torch) by Jan de Marre and Johannes van Keulen (II), published 1753. By that time Britain and France had already produced their own pilot books for these waters: John Thornton had produced the third book of The English Pilot in 1703, with maps and sailing directions for Eastern waters. The Frenchman J.B.d’Apres de Manne- villette produced his Neptune Oriental in 1745, and wrote his Instruction Sur La Navigation Des Indes Orientales et de la Chine in 1775. Before d’Apres, Jacques-Nicolas Bellin updated and improved the Neptune François, and eventually re-issued it in several editions, with the title of Hydrographie Française des cartes receuil dressées au Dépôt des plans de la Marine, pour le service des vaisseaux du Roy (1756). The most influential pilot books for the 19th century for these waters probably were the ones by J. Horsburgh: Memoirs: comprising the navigation to and from China, by the China Sea and through the various straits and channels in the Indian archipelago, published in London in 1805, as well as his India directory or directions for sailing to and from the East Indies, etc. London: 1836. Figure 1 – Detail from East Asian manuscript map produced by VOC cartographers about 1650 (from: Sailing for the East, Schilder and Kok 2010). Ilhas de Ladrones refers to Cheju-do island. A common trait of all these pilot books was the almost total absence of sea names although they did cover names of bays, straits and capes, so other sources had to be found: these were the 19th century atlases in which European geographers tried to order the available information. It was here that the first systematic naming of the seas was visible. I have analysed the material in websites on 19th century German atlases, as Germany was the primary atlas producer in that century. Another aspect of putting into order the spatial information is the grouping into larger units, as is the case with the Sunda isles: the division into Greater Sunda and Lesser Sunda islands stems from that period too. The Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap der Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Proceedings of the Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences) founded in 1778 were also scrutinised, as were the Daghregisters of Batavia Castle: from 1619 onwards everything that passed through the port of Batavia was noted down, stating the business of everyone, where they had come from or went to and what their business was. So much geographical information was contained in these registers. Early European explorers In the first atlas produced, by Ptolemy, reference is made, apart from the Indian Ocean, to two seas in the area: Magnus Sinus, which is either matched with the Gulf of Thailand or the China Sea, and the Sinus Gangeticus or Gulf of Bengal; in between which the Golden Chersonese was located: either Malaya or the whole Southeast Asian peninsula. In the first Portuguese maps, as on Vaz Dourado’s Indian Ocean map, only the Mare Indium Orientalis is mentioned, that is the Sea of the East Indies, or the sea that envelops all of the East Indies. This is the only sea mentioned at the time, but gradually some sea straits are also incorporated on the maps, just as are some other navigational hazards like reefs and shoals. Figure 2: Part of Indonesian archipelago, from Atlas Isaak de Graaf (1700) When we look at the maps in the first Dutch atlas of the archipelago, produced in 1700 in Amsterdam (see figure 2) from map material collected by the hydrographer of the Dutch East India Company in Batavia (Schilder e.a.2006), the only hydronyms we find are names of sea straits, like Sunda Straits, Strait Drioens (Selat Durian), Strait Singapura, Strait Bangka, Strait Madura, Strait Bali, Strait Lombok and Strait Alas. Figure 3, from an English atlas published in 1720, shows a similar situation, with only Straits of Malacca, Singapura, Sunda, Bali, Lombok, Alas, Sapi and Makassar named apart from the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the Bay of Siam. But gradually seas are being named as well. The first one to be named was the Java Sea – but this sea name referred to a different concept from what we are used to now. Figure 3, Detail from Herman Moll’s New and Compleat Atlas (1720) Figure 4 Detail of Adriaan Reland’s map (1718) titled Insula Iavae pars orientalis. From surrounding seas to demarcated seas Initially, the East Indian Sea is the name of the sea the East Indies are located in, just as the name Java Sea refers to the waters that surround Java island, just as, in the 1860s, the Timor Sea is still the sea Timor is located in (see figure 6 and 7). In figure 6 it says in a name inserted on both the north and south side of Java island: De Oost-Indische Zee of de Zee van Java, that is the East-Indian Sea or the Sea of Java. So here the Java Sea is the sea Java is situated in. The name Oost-Indische Zee refered to the waters that bathed the East Indies, and it stretched from India to the Philippines and on some maps evenn to Japan. The same is visible in maps produced by other seafaring nations: in the atlas produced by Nicolas Sanson in 1669 the Ocean Oriental ou Indien can be found all around continental Southeast Asia, and the Ocean ou Mer Indiene or Mare dell’Indie washes South East Asia’s islands. This also has a bearing on later developments, after demarcation of specific sea areas: If the Celebes Sea originally was all around the island, it can be understood when there later emerges confusion, whether the area to the north or to the south of Celebes should be the Celebes Sea. Figure 5 – Detail from the map on the Asiatic Archipelago, from John Arrowsmith’s London Atlas of Universal Geography, London 1832, showing the Passages in eastern Indonesian waters. Bougainville Strait is located north of Waygion (presently Waigeo) island. Passages Gradually this changes and the surrounding seas are being demarcated and carved up into individually named parts: Java Sea, from the 19th century onwards is located only north of Java, while the south coast of Java is henceforth only watered by the Indian Ocean. But first, before this demarcation, there is an interim period in which western mariners discern a number of compound passages through the archipelago, for the clippers that engaged in the tea trade: as Strait Makassar is very difficult to navigate for sailing vessels during part of the year, in 1758 a British sea captain named Wilson found a quicker passage when navigating from China to CapeTown. It was located north of Ceram island, and he called this Pitt’s passage (present Laut Seran). In continuation of this strait sailing ships would navigate northwards either through the Moluccas Passage (present Laut Maluku), through the Gilolo Passage (present Laut Halmahera), Bougainville Strait or Dampier Strait. My attestations for the first use of the names of these passages are: -Pitt’s passage 1758 (named by Captain Wilson, after his ship Pitt, 1758), -Moluccas passage 1804 (named by Arrowsmith) -Gilolo Passage 1805 (Horsburgh) (named after Gilolo or Halmahera island) -Ombay Passage 18o5 (Horsburgh)(northeast of Timor, named after Ombay or Alor island). Increased interest in marine matters In the 19th century interest emerged in the seas themselves, also due to oceanographic research. There was an increase in the publication of reference and educational works too that called for names to designate the topogra-phical objects shown.