Located on a hill at Mohamed Sultan Road, Hong San See is a Hokkien temple built in the early 20th century by the migrant community from Fujian province, hence it is a Hokkien temple. This year, Hong San See won the Award for Excellence in the 2010 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation following restoration efforts between 2007 and 2009.
The temple is often called Hong San See Temple, but yg explains why this may be a redundancy in terms:
some people tend to give the name of the temple as hong san see temple. i think the word ‘see’ or ‘sze’ is chinese for temple. so, adding the word ‘temple’ may be superfluous. it is the same with some places with a malay name, like sungei buloh river, gunong tahan mountain, bukit timah hill and masjid sultan mosque. it is like saying ‘jalan besar road’ when ‘jalan besar’ will suffice.
Check out yg’s post on the recently-restored temple here. If you’re interested in taking a closer look at the temple, consider joining the heritage tour organised by the Singapore Heritage Society on 20th November.
1 Response
I totally agree with your observation about the use of redundant words such as “temple” or “river” after names which contain Chinese or Malay words which already contain such words. However from a practical point, it helps people who do not know the language – at least they will have an idea what the name is referring too. One solution might be to omit the vernacular word and just have the name followed by “Temple’ or River” e.g. “Hong San Temple” and “Buloh River” or “River Buloh”
Posted on February 19th, 2011 at 6:44 pm
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