During the Dutch colonial era, the Dutch administration recorded Chinese names in birth certificates and other legal documents using an adopted spelling convention that was based primarily on the Hokkien, the language of the majority of Chinese immigrants in the Dutch East Indies. The administrators used the closest Dutch pronunciation and spelling of Hokkien words to record the names. A similar thing happened in Malaya, where the British administrators record the names using English spelling. vs. Liem, Wee or Ooi vs. Oei or Oey, Goh vs. Go, Chan vs. Tjan, Lee vs. Lie, Leong vs Liong Hence, Lin is spelled Liem in Indonesia. Chen is Tan, Huang is Oei or Oey, Wu is Go, Wei is Goei or Ngoei, Guo is Kwee, Yang is Njoo, and so on. Further, as Hokkien romanization standard did not exist then, some romanized names varied slightly. For example, 郭 could sometimes be Kwik, Que or Kwek instead of Kwee and Huang is often Oei instead of Oey. The spelling convention survived through the Japanese occupation well into Indonesian independence and sovereignty acknowledgment by the Dutch government. Since the independent Indonesian government inherited the Dutch legal system, it also survived until 1965 in the Sukarno era. The Indonesian government later began changing Indonesian spelling to harmonize it with the spelling used for Malay in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, first under the Ejaan Suwandi introduced in 1947, and again under the Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan, literally "Perfected Spelling", adopted in 1972. Under the Suwandi system of spelling, "oe", influenced by Dutch, became "u", influenced by English; for example, Loe was spelled as Lu. Since 1972, Dutch-style "j" became "y", meaning Njoo is now spelled Nyoo.
1966–1998
After Suharto came to power, his regime created many anti-Chinese legislations in Indonesia. One of them was 127/U/Kep/12/1966 which strongly encouraged ethnic Chinese living in Indonesia to adopt Indonesian-sounding names instead of the standard three-word or two-word Chinese names. Many Indonesianized names are Hokkien surname syllables with western or Indonesian prefix or suffix - resulting in many exotic-sounding names. Although two Chinese individuals shared the same Chinese surname, they may employ different strategies for the Indonesian-sounding names. For example, one with the surname 林 may adopt "Limanto", and the other may adopt "Halim" as Indonesian-sounding names. "Limanto" and "Halim" both contain "lim" that corresponds to the 林 surname. The famous 1966 political activist and businessman Sofjan Wanandi translated Lin to old Javanese "wana", meaning forest, and added the male-suffix "ndi", resulting in the new clan name Wanandi. Despite the Indonesianization, the Hokkien surnames are still used today by the Chinese-Indonesian diaspora overseas ; by those Chinese-Indonesians courageous enough during Suharto's regime to keep their Chinese names, or by those who couldn't afford to process the name change through Indonesia's civil bureaucracy.
2000–present
After Suharto resigned from the presidency, subsequent governments revoked the ban on the ethnic Chinese from speaking and learning Chinese in public. Using the original Chinese surnames is no longer a taboo but only a small minority have decided to re-adopt the original Hokkien names of their grandparents or to use the Mandarin Chinese pinyin romanization, pronunciation and spelling and most retain their changed names as the post-1965 generations have been culturally Indonesianized.
Examples of Chinese surnames and their Indonesian-sounding adoptions
