Some material below also appears in Chapter 693 of the Orange Book.
For outsiders, non-Kristang people and media organisations and publications, the terms that should be used with the creole and Indigenous Kristang people, language and culture are either Kristang (primarily in English and Kristang) or Serani (primarily in Malay and Kristang), with Portuguese-Eurasian also a functional but longer name. All other proposed names and labels, especially those listed as dispreferred on this page, are either for community-internal use only, refer to another identity matrix instead, are highly and particularly context-specific, or else tend to be used as part of covertly disrespectful, dehumanising, recolonising, abusive and/or hegemonic attempts to exert control over the community, especially by the Singapore state and/or abusive evangelical elements within or adjacent to it. Non-Kristang people, including academics, Singaporean government officials and users of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Wiktionary or other such sites who are intentionally using any of the dispreferred terms below following the paragraph on the preferred ethnonyms of Kristang and Serani can generally be immediately regarded with full suspicion, distrust and/or disdain for the lack of respect shown to the community, and can generally be taken to not have general community approval or support.
The preferred ethnonyms of Kristang and Serani
All extant documentation of the community by both insiders and outsiders indicates that Kristang is by and large the preferred and “natural” ethnonym or word used to refer to the community; even in Bernard Sta Maria’s seminal work My People, My Country (1982), where he tries to argue for the use of the term Malacca Portuguese in place of Kristang, he highlights that the term Kristang is still nonetheless used very widely in informal settings as a term used by ourselves to refer to ourselves. Indeed, the term Kristang was creolised around August 1808 not as a means of highlighting that we were an Indigenous ethnicity primarily based around the religion of Christianity, but as a means of very subversive protest, rebellion and counter-institutional movement against invading British colonisers, under the first Kabesa of the Kristang, Adriaan Koek. We sought to show that the British view of ethnicity and race was a deeply problematic and essentializing one, as it sometimes continues to be today in Malaysia and Singapore thanks to legacy British influence and to abusive elements in the modern government of Singapore. The term Serani is the Malay equivalent of this preferred ethnonym in English, and the term Portuguese-Eurasian in English is also acceptable, though it is much longer and harder to say than just “Kristang”. When in doubt, just remember: no one ever calls Haitian people or their language “Port-au-Prince French” and no one ever calls call Jamaican people or their language “Kingston British”, especially Haitian and Jamaican people themselves. Haitian people and Jamaican people, and most other creole communities and nations around the world, generally prefer to have their own unique ethnonyms and demonyms to refer to themselves.
The related term Krismeri is used to refer to non-Kristang people who are considered to have supported the community in significant and reinvigorating ways, but who have no interest in assimilating into the Kristang creole/Indigenous identity or who have yet to fulfill the psychoemotional conditions necessary to do so.
Dispreferred Terms
These terms have been used to refer to the community in the past or in the present as incipient attempts to re-extend either (a) abusive hegemonic Singaporean state control, (b) colonial or neocolonial control, or (c) excessive evangelical control over the community, and should therefore be dispreferred by outsiders due to their complexities and sensitivities when referring to the Kristang people, culture, language and/or community. Usage exceptions are provided after the list.
- Eurasian Peranakan, Peranakan Eurasian etc. (i.e. = anything with Peranakan within it, especially when used in the context of Singapore) as an exact synonym for Kristang; Eurasian Peranakan is not synonymous with Kristang and refers to a different identity construct altogether
- Malaqueiro
- Malacca Portuguese, Portugis di Melaka, or anything highlighting Malacca and/or Portugal at the expense of the other two core Kristang cities of Singapore and Perth, and the worldwide Kristang diaspora
- Malacca Creoles
- Portuguese, Portugis, etc.
The usage exceptions section below also contains notes on the separate term Grago / Geragau / Gragok, which is not a dispreferred term but a insider-exclusive term.
Usage Exceptions
- The ethnic identities (1) Kristang / Serani / Portuguese-Eurasian and (2) Eurasian Peranakan / Peranakan Eurasian are separate identities, refer to different cultural traditions, communities, creolisation styles, ways of being, cuisines and eleidi, and are not exact synonyms of each other. Many media outlets in the past have often accidentally confused the two: Eurasian Peranakans or Peranakan Eurasians by definition would be Eurasians who have adopted and creolised Peranakan traditions or cultures as a result of having at least one parent who is Peranakan, and therefore can also be but are not necessarily Kristang (i.e. one could be British-Eurasian Peranakan or Dutch-Eurasian Peranakan without having Kristang or Portuguese-Eurasian ancestry). Usages of “Eurasian Peranakan” and its derivatives above as exact synonyms for Kristang are generally strongly at odds with both historical and contemporary Kristang and mainline Peranakan understandings of each other and the realities that both communities existed in, are usually quite stridently rejected in informal conversation, and are therefore not supported by the Kristang community in general, being found alien and unfamiliar at best. Again, someone can be both (1) Eurasian Peranakan and (2) Kristang, but these are two separate and distinct identity categories (i.e. (1) AND (2)), rather than synonyms of the same identity construct (i.e. (1) = (2)).
- Kristang people in Malacca and Malaysian media outlets do call Kristang people Malacca Portuguese or Portugis di Melaka; this is for contextual reasons specific to Malacca and to emphasise the historic role and place Malacca has in our culture as our progenitor city and place of origin. However, outside of Malaysia, Kristang people should simply be called Kristang people, as this is the most holistic and concise encapsulation of the community’s creole and Indigenous nature and its expansion and thriving worldwide, and the term “Malacca Portuguese” often reinforces the forms of hegemonic control mentioned above. Some videos, articles and/or media publications that are not created or developed by a Kristang person from Malaysia occasionally try to excessively highlight any variant form of the name “Malacca Portuguese” in order to overidealise or romanticise our connection to Portugal for any of the various forms of hegemonic control mentioned above. Again, when in doubt, use the example of “Haitian” vs “Port-au-Prince French”. Haitian Creole and Kristang are both quite distant from modern French and Portuguese in terms of language, identity and culture, and Haitian Creole speakers take pride in being called “Haitian Creole speakers” or “Haitian speakers” because the French connection is still understood without being emphasised to an excessive degree. Kristang people who identify as Malacca Portuguese exclusively are thus likely doing so because of the particular context of Malacca and Malaysia, especially where the word “Kristang” is often falsely taken to exclusively mean Christian (see point 3 below), when it is primarily an ethnic term that was creolised from the Portuguese word for Christian.
- Older Kristang people do use the term “Portuguese / Portugis” interchangeably with Kristang, even though this is scientifically inaccurate. This is due to colonisation and the humiliating and shattering disdain that most governments, other non-Kristang Eurasians and even academics showed to the Kristang before 2016, such that it was not safe to identify ourselves as a unique creole Indigenous community by our own name. Some people in the groups above also deliberately over-conflated the ethnicity Kristang with the religion Christianity in an attempt to turn Kristang into a vehicle for Christian evangelisation and/or to open the community up for attack in Muslim-majority Malaya; hence, for some older non-Christian Kristang, there is a fear of calling themselves Kristang because of this.
- The term Grago / Geragau / Gragok is an insider term. It can be used by Krismeri or non-Kristang people who are close to Kristang people, but generally most Kristang people find it offensive if a non-Kristang person with no strong connection to or respect from the Kristang community uses the term.