When Your Name Is a "Simple Past Tense"

Tulisan sederhana di bawah ini menang dalam kompetisi Creative Eyes Contest yang diadakan oleh International Student Service, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

William Shakespeare said, "What's in a name?" In contrary, Soekarno, the Indonesian first president, argued that a name is everything. He has even changed some people's name because he thought the name might not be philosophically meaningful or even might cause something unlucky.

I personally agree with Soekarno. A name, apparently, has a quite significant meaning. At least, it was what I thought when I was away from home, living in a strange country with a completely different language: Australia.

One day, an ATO officer called me with regards to my TFN application to confirm that my name is really "I Made Andi Arsana". She was confused, firstly because she could not clearly define my first name and last name [too many words, huh]. Secondly she's got confused because there is only one letter in the first name, "I". Further more,
she nearly could not believe that my name is a "simple past tense", which means, "I created Andi Arsana" [oops it wasn't her!]

A quite long conversation was then taken place because I had to explain that "I" indicates that I am a man, "Madé" means I am the second child and "Andi Arsana" is my name. I know it was funny.

If we look to several names of music groups, for instance, it is common to use a complete sentence as a name. "Michael Learns to Rock", which is a simple present tense, is one of them. It might be a bit strange or at least funny if an Indonesian music group called "Paijo Belajar Ngerock" (Paijo learns to rock).

Anyway, if the name could cause a trouble and even danger, I should re-consider my plan to name our future son "I Made Yuin Sydney" :)