Naming Singapore: A Historical Survey on the Naming and Re-naming Process of the Lion City

The history of the names of Singapore and of their variants and different versions produced over time is extremely interesting and shows still some unclear stages, both at the etymological level, in the linguistic explanation of the origins and original meanings of the numerous names the island had throughout the centuries, and at the historical level, in the attempt to connect the names of Singapore with local and external peoples who inhabited and occupied the island in the past. This paper aims at providing a synthetic, but punctual, survey on the names used for the Lion City over time, with the addition of some linguistic and historical details. The main issue in the diachronic reconstruction of the names of Singapore resides in the early stages of the history of the island, for which the historical sources are rare and, sometimes, controversial. The different names used for Singapore from the beginnings of its history witness changes in population and settlement dynamics that are not always very clear, due to the lack of reliable historical sources, but that give an outstanding image of the multicultural and multilingual nature of Singapore already from its origins. The paper reconstructs and documents the different stages of the naming process of Singapore from the origins to the present time.