Frankly speaking, most Malaysians still prefer to refer themselves according to their skin rather than the whole entity which is Malaysian. I am an observant person, and perhaps even you are observant as well. In your daily conversation, especially with strangers, you often hear people say “I am Chinese”, “I am Malay”, “I am Indian” or sometimes “I am Sabahan” or “I am Sarawakian”.

While I was talking with one man yesterday, he mistakenly believe that ALL Sarawakians are indigenous peoples and that I am one of the Dayak tribes despite my very Chinese look.

I looked at him with my eyes wide open for a few seconds. I had to explain to him that not all Sarawakians are kacukan (mixed-blood), and the same goes to Sabahans.

There is something very wrong here, what happened to the general knowledge of these people? It is very incomprehensible for me that this people are so wrong when it comes to getting the facts right especially when their own country is of concern.

Remember those days when you have to memorize all the States and Federal Territories in Malaysia? You learned it in History and Geography. That was a fun topic for me to digest, at least to me it is fun to learn. The moment I grab the map, I can easily point out which state it is and where the state capital is.

Let us look at what demonym means since the word demonym was luckily picked as the title of this post. A demonym is a word that denotes the members of a people or the inhabitants of a place. As far as English is concern, a demonym is generated by adding suffixes of -an, -ian, -ite, -ese, -i, -ine, -no, -ino, -ene, -ard, -ic, -ish and -er, just to name a few. More can be found at Wikipedia.

I will try my best, in my greatest observation, to share with you how some people of certain states refer themselves as.

I am very sure that for these few states, they refer themselves as Johorean (Johor), Kedahan (Kedah), Kelantanese (Kelantan), Malaccan (Malacca), Penangite (Penang), Perakian (Perak), Sabahan (Sabah) and Sarawakian (Sarawak).

There are a few states which I have no idea what they call themselves as, if you happen to know then please post your answer in the comment section. What does the people of Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Perlis, Selangor and Terengganu call themselves. What about the three Federal Territories namely Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya?

We are Malaysians! I wonder when will we refer ourselves as Malaysians instead of Malays, Chinese, Indians and the like.