Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Names

This is Made (Mah-day). She is one of the vendors on the beach. When you go to the beach, you are often surrounded by several women asking you if you want a massage, manicure, pedicure, sarong, pencil, etc. If they are selling items, they are waving them enticingly in your face; if they are selling services, they are telling you they will give you "good price". We are able to circumnavigate this by letting them know we've been here a while. And we usually visit with them for a while before moving on.

What I wanted to say was: traditionally, there are only a few names on Bali. The first child is named Wayan, the second is Made, third is Nyoman, and the fourth is Ketut. If the family has more than four kids, they start over with Wayan. If there are twins, they share the same name. So my subject in this picture is the second child. If Dad was a firstborn, and has five kids, there are potentially three Wayans in a family. Now they also use western names, and there are a few other variations on the four names, but this is the typical scenario.

Just thought you might find it interesting.

4 comments:

ShaleAnn Cluff said...

That made me laugh out loud!
Love ya!
Made,Made,Wayan,Made and Nyoman

Anonymous said...

this is such a fantastic picture. i love when you share about cultural things like this. very interesting.

christy said...

that woman's face is amazing! what an experience you are having over there. thanks for sharing it with us....

Annecourager said...

holy cow, that would be confustable... what an interesting tidbit of culture, though!

And the picture is worthy of entry into the state fair circuit, I swear. it's well done.

now, off to read more posts to catch up on your life!! :)

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