This is continuation of my previous post. You don’t really need to read it since I wrote this for purpose of archive. Someday I will compile all my quests into a single story so my descendants could know history of their family and don’t need to be confused to know who is who when going to party and meet with their cousins from the BIG BIG family.
Heritages: Chinee, Javanese, Dutch
As I wrote in previous article, I was born with mixed ancestry of Chinese (Father) and Chinese-Javanese-Dutch (Mother) descent. Due patrillineal culture of chinese family, I inherit the name of Sie/Shi family from my father’s family though it doesn’t mean I was spoiled like some emperor and thinks my other families are not important.
I decided to list all family tree that run in my vein, I’m also considering to list my cousin’s wife, due proximity of our family.
de Wilde Family: Great Grandmother’s parents are identified
Few months after I found the old dutch documents, I asked some dutch-speaking people (including my cousin in Netherlands) to translate the things. Well the problem is, the language appeared rather different than the modern dutch. He said it wasn’t an easy to translate.
Fortunately, in chinese new year party, I met my sister in law (my cousin’s wife, he is son of my mother’s sister), she studied few years in Netherlands, therefore she has sufficient knowledge of conversational dutch, and able to translate the document despite her limitation.
The documents actually contained interesting information. It contains information of the mother of my grandma (from mother’s side) who is Javanese descent. It has been long mystery all this time about the origin of my Javanese descent, I thought I lost all chances to find her information, but this document provided another shred of hope.
My granny’s mother, Soetirah, was daughter of Mas Mangoentirto and Salijem. Her place of birth still unknown, so is her birthdate and any other. I’m very sure it will be very hard to investigate my javanese ancestor family tree because javanese doesn’t have surname.
My grandma’s sister is actually still living in Rotterdam, but due nature of her old age, she has shown symptomps of senility. I wish things could have been different, she is still my grandma after all 
Sie Family, Discovery of Family Kanji
The quest for my father’s family tree has better story though. Last month, a distant relative, my father’s brother in law (his cousin’s husband) passed away. I came to burial ceremony, and managed to to interview my family members who just came from Makassar.
The best part is, my father’s cousin, the one who has knowledge of our family history actually just arrived from America. I quickly asked him about the kanji of our family, and yay, I finally found out the kanji of our family which was probably almost forgotten for decades. Just like I predicted, the Sie originally is spelled as Shi, ?. The kanji means charity.
A quick search in wikipedia, I found out Shi family is one of the royal family name (?) of the pre-history in China. A surprise indeed, apparently my ancestor is one came from royal family so it means I have blue blood. *lol*
Chinese Naming
Ahem, put that aside, I was also informed by my uncle how to give proper chinese name to later descendant. This rule applies to my family, dunno about other families though.
The rule is pretty simple actually, the syntax is:
(Family Name) (Generation Name) (Given Name)
This is an example taken from my family tree:
Sie Ho Long, my great grandfather had 12 childrens (or probably more). Three sons given name as follows: Sie Ie Tjoan (my grandfather), Sie Ie Soen (his youngest son), Sie Ie Su (stepson, died in 17), and Sie Ie Lok.
My grandfather gave name to his two sons as follows: Sie Tek Djieng (my father), and Sie Tek Ie.
Sie Ie Lok, my grandfather’s brother gave name of his sons as follows: Sie Tek Eng, and Sie Tek Hui
See the pattern? The Ie and Tek functioned as marker to inform the generation they came from, therefore makes them able to identify the proper honorific form should be used when they greeted each other. The Third name is of course, given by the parents.
So far I only know my father’s and sister’s chinese name and their writing because my uncle went to Hong Kong. I hope to see him again soon though because he’s currently the only family member that is knowledgeable in mandarin and know our family history. I hope it’s possible to identify all of my family’s chinese name and their characters though.
Few days ago during my vacation, I also happened to visit my father’s cousin. She is one of the oldest and the most respected person in our family, and she knew a lot about our family history. She even shared me the photo of my great grandfather with his sons (my grandfathers). This is very helpful information of course, now I could see at first time what was my great-great grandfather and his sons were alike when they were young.
I gues that’s all for now. I shall post more after do more investigation of my family root.
For chinese who are still reluctant about their chinese identity because you don’t speak neither practice chinese culture in your entire life, I suggest you to see the life of Wang Lee Hom, the chinese-american singer.
He interestingly, didn’t speak mandarin until 18, he’s unique case because he could conform his identity without being reluctant like shown by most chinese Indonesians. I don’t think there is word of ” too late” to conform your ancestors’ culture. Even if you dont wont continue to practice, it could be kept as archive of family history and shall be told again to your descendants so everyone know the origin of how they came into being.
I am sure everyone in the world has interesting story of their family because no human is born out of nothingness. 
Dutch-Indonesian Community in Facebook, if you are eurasian mix of Netherlands-Indonesian, I suggest you to join this group.
Interesting stuff – even for someone like me who has no Chinese family links at all.
And by the way: though the translation of the Dutch documents seems to have been successful, my offer to help is still standing in necessary.
oh thank you colson, would you mind to send them to my email? thank you very much for the comments
Having similar problem, maybe you could use geni.com to trace your genealogy, it maybe interesting.
@danu
I have tried geni, that site is not too good, they couldnt handle the .ged file of chinese name that have family name-generation name-given name syntax.
i c your point, Calvin however with geni+facebook sometimes helps other family member to participate on their knowledge of their own family, thus expand the family tree. I’m having similar problem with yours (generation name), I’m curious to hear how you handle them, what software do you use? Thanks in advance.
mas danu, sorry for the late answer, I use genopro for my family tree.
By the name of it, it seems that your great great grandfather was not commoner. So if you knew the area where he lived, you could probably start from there.
It’s funny cause I know more about my Javanese ancestry than my other branch though I heard it could be trace all the way to Bugis via Bima.
There is some distrubing legend that my family name might be not “de Wilde” at all. De wilde itself is common name in Belgium, but rare in Netherlands. I have checked many naval logs and didn’t find any record of anyone named de Wilde that related to my great-great grandfather, maybe he’s not even dutch? -_-
well, in the case of my ex’ family, he thought his ancestor was Dutch, but as it turns out he was Belgian. So probably the same with yours. or maybe de Wilt?
btw, about starting with the location associated with your ancestors, try it with your javanese branch of family too. It’s easier with the males than females tho.
oh, that’s inspiring experience, thanks for sharing triesti! I never have a second thought that my ancestor wasn’t a dutch, but I probably should start to think the possibility. De wilde itself originate from Wildau, a region in Poland, there is possibility that my ancestors were Polish.
as for my javanese family, they came from Kebumen. I want to visit the city sometime of course. I would like to know the city where my great grandmother was born