Some material below also appears in Chapter 635 of the Orange Book.
Assimilation into the Kristang identity and culture and becoming able to identify as a Kristang person have been foundational and core components of how the community has expanded since its inception in Melaka in the 16th century. The core of Kristang identity and culture itself as a Portuguese-Malay indigenous creole will always remain irrevocable and unchanged; beyond that, as a creole ethnic community, we are not bound by or subject to traditional or mainstream notions of race and ethnicity, where in addition to many non-Kristang spouses assimilating into Kristang and eventually becoming perceived and accepted as Kristang, we have often looked for and concretised humanising and liberating ways of making space for others rejected by society, including people of mixed-race or uncertain origin, orphans, queer people, neurodivergent people, people escaping from abusive families or places of origin or governments, people born from socially undesirable or psychologically horrifying situations, and generally people who are treated as outcasts or undesirables by the rest of the planet. In ourselves, as a highly egalitarian creole and Indigenous ethnic community, we continue to be rejected, marginalised and ignored by many institutions and agencies, as well as our own governments, and so have in many ways taken it upon ourselves to become the eleidi or collective for others that we ourselves were never allowed to be part of, based on our shared core values; because we are creole, everything that the people assimilating into Kristang bring with themselves — their own ethnic backgrounds, histories, stories, songs, art and ways of being — also then becomes something that we creolise from as a way of honouring their decision to be part of our world and our eleidi in such a deep way.
To assimilate into the Kristang eleidi, all four components of the self in the Kristang Quaternity of Personhood must be recognizably Kristang to at least two other Kristang people already born by blood into the Kristang culture, and be visibly and consistently acknowledged in some form in such fashion by these Kristang people. Chapter 635 of the Orange Book sets out the 32 criteria or 128 sub-criteria that are required psychoemotionally for this to be effected; however, few, if any Kristang people think about these criteria consciously, and they are merely a very and somewhat excessively articulated description or mechanical working of what is still a primarily unconscious process based on vibe. Any two Kristang people can thus theoretically recognise someone else as Kristang, but because this recognition is based on vibe, it cannot be forced or manipulated, and is akin to merely observing what is, rather than trying to look very hard for reasons why it might be. Indeed, although the criteria can be retroactively explained, such recognition simply “happens organically” or “relationally” since we are Indigenous, and is then further unconsciously acknowledged subsequently by other Kristang people and something that again simply is, rather than something someone has mechanically worked at and achieved, or tried very hard to align themselves to. People who satisfy at least some of these 32 criteria or 128 sub-criteria, but not all, are classed as Krismeri, the second-order identity marker that indicates a strong degree of support or connection to the community, but not a complete Kristangisation of the self.
Due to the psychoemotional changes involved and the is-ness of identifying as Kristang, identifying as Kristang is generally permanent and irrevocable unless there is a conscious intention to downplay or remove the Kristangness, usually due to a disdain for creole and Indigenous ways of being similar to that presented by those who aspired to an Upper Ten or more European / British middle class identity status in colonial Malaya, and/or as a result of the reclamation of the significance and importance of queer and neurodivergent ways of being Kristang since March 2016 under the leadership of the 13th Kabesa. Those who assimilate into Kristang also often retain their original ethnic identit(ies), but the ‘Kristang vibe’ or ‘layer’ also generally remains discernible to any Kristang person once all criteria are satisfied. All Kabesa living, prior, current and/or future ultimately also have no power to withhold or refuse to grant recognition to any person who has been observed to be and recognised as Kristang by any two other Kristang people following the mechanisms listed above and further described in Chapter 635 of the Orange Book.
The two Kristang people born by blood into the Kristang community who are the first to recognise the person assimilating into the Kristang community as Kristang are known as the person’s koadri or kuadri or (in the case of the person assimilating and the two Kristang people being of roughly around the same age) witnesses or sponsors or (in the case of a significant age difference) godparents, with komadri or kumadri used for a sponsor, witness or godparent of jenis and/or jenta aurora or femi, kompadri or kumpadri used for a sponsor, witness or godparent of jenis and/or jenta elios or machu, and koadri or kuadri used for a sponsor, witness or godparent of jenis terestra and/or jenta kadmang.