Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalof404219041905roya).pdf/446

 I have in the previous pages endeavoured to bring it up to date, as far as the Chinese names are concerned. To do this satisfactorily, is impossible. Exact names for many streets do not exist. In this respect Singapore differs from Penang, where new streets are fewer and more easily identified. It is characteristic of the Chinese that in a matter of this kind, accuracy is the last thing that strikes them as essential. If you ask a Chinaman—or better still a Chinese woman—newly arrived and resident in Singapore, where he lives, the invariable answer will be "Singapore." A second query will perhaps elicit information as to the district of the town or island, but it will take many questions before the actual address can be ascertained, though it might have been given directly, if the person questioned had thought that it was of any importance.

The Chinese have a happy-go-lucky way of using one expression to describe any one of perhaps a dozen streets. Any Chinaman living at the town-end of Bukit Timah Road, in Albert Street, Selegie Road, near Kandang Kerbau Police Station, Short Street, or in any of the numerous lanes in that neighbourhood will, if asked where he lives, reply "Tek Kah" (i. e. Foot of the bamboos), and unless cross-examined would not volunteer any further information, though the answer might mean any one of a dozen streets.

The more important thoroughfares have recognised names known to Chinese of all classes. There are. however, a number of new and smaller streets, and it appears to me that it is important that these should be easily identified. Especially is it important that official interpreters should have a through knowledge of the names, English and Chinese, for all the streets in the town, a matter in which, in my experience, many Government interpreters are lamentably ignorant.

As already remarked, in many cases there are no Chinese names for streets. Tanjong Pagar and Kampong Kapor districts are full of new roads and streets, nameless at present to the Chinese, and defying identification. The houses are new and often not occupied by Chinese, but Singapore is a Chinese town and any one who has watched its growth will realise that in all likelihood these new roads will be busy throughfares be-