I’ve always been fascinated by the origin and evolution of Singaporean place names, and among many other things, my second book will make space for them.
One place name to be scrutinised is “Punggol”, currently one of Singapore’s largest and most youthful towns in terms of population.
What does “Punggol” mean?
Googling the word reveals that it is a Malay word, usually defined as “hurling sticks at the branches of fruit trees to bring them down to the ground”.
This definition can also be found on one of a series of heritage panels lining Punggol Waterway, near Waterway Point – part of an “official” history of Punggol.
But is it? I decided to investigate further.
Going down the rabbit hole of citations
The likeliest source for this definition is a 2001 Straits Times article on Singaporean place names.
The article states that the Malay word, spelled “Punggol” or “Ponggol”, has two meanings:
“Hurling sticks into trees to bring fruit down”
“A place where fruit and produce are offered wholesale” According to the article, this could have been a reference to a market at the 8th Milestone in the 1920s.
A check of old maps reveals that the second definition is not likely, as “Punggol” – and variations of its spelling – goes much further back than the 1920s.
In an 1828 map, the peninsula eventually known as Punggol is named Tanjong Rangung (below), possibly after the burung ranggung, the same bird which gave Serangoon its name.
By 1843, the peninsula was renamed Tanjong Pongol, and in an 1868 map, it is Tanjong Pongal, although the country road running through it is Pongole Road (below). Subsequent spellings of the road include “Pongol”, “Pongul”, “Ponggol”, and “Punggol”.
The 2001 article does not state its sources, but it could have lifted the meanings of “Punggol” from a 1955 Straits Times article by S. Ramachandra, again on Singaporean place names.
This article defines “Punggol” as “to hurl or throw violently”, citing R. J. Wilkinson’s 1901 A Malay-English Dictionary, and “to bring down fruit by throwing stones or striking the branches with pies (?) or sticks. It also means the gathering place of farmers with their produce preparatory to despatch to the markets, which is still practised by the Chinese farmers.”
A conflation of definitions
What does Wilkinson’s dictionary actually say, though?
In the dictionary, “Punggol” or “Ponggol” (ڤڠݢل) merely means “to hurl” or “to throw violently” – as Ramachandra cited.
However, it is “Punggai” (ڤوڠݢاي), a Kedah word, that means “a stick used to throw at trees with the purpose of knocking down the fruit”.
There is also “Punggah” (ڤوڠݢه), meaning “unloading, discharging; removing goods from one place to another”, which is the closest to Ramachandra’s definition involving farmers despatching produce.
It appears that Ramachandra had conflated the definitions of “Punggol / Ponggol”, “Punggai”, and perhaps even “Punggah”, a development which was parroted by the 2001 article, and subsequent physical and online publications.
A fallen tamarind tree
Due to a lack of British familiarity with Malay words when recording them on British maps and news articles, it is also possible that the place name had originated from other Malay words which sound similar to “Punggol / Ponggol” and “Punggai”.
There is “Punggok / Pungguk” (ڤوڠݢوق) — the burung punggok is “a small owl which is proverbially represented as the lover of the moon and therefore as the type of despairing but passionate love”.
Today, the brown hawk owl (below) is the burung pungguk; the oriental bay owl is the burung pungguk api; and the barn owl is the burung pungguk jelapang. Any of these species could have been common in the peninsula in the 19th century.
The likeliest alternative is “Punggor” (ڤوڠݢور), meaning “a fallen tree, a dead trunk; a leafless or fallen trunk”.
According to the oral accounts of Awang Osman (1906–1990), headman of Kampong Punggol, his maternal great-grandfather Wak Sumang was the founder of his 11-acre village, also known as Kampong Wak Sumang, probably mapped as early as 1848.
Wak Sumang had constructed a hut for his farm, and there was an asam jawa (tamarind) tree next to it. Eventually, it shrivelled up, died, and crashed upon the hut – a punggor. Because of this, Awang related, Wak Sumang declared: “I’ll name this village ‘Punggur’”.
Thereafter, Wak Sumang dumped the punggor into a river, to cast it out to sea. The next time he visited the river to catch shrimp, he realised the punggor he had let loose somehow returned upstream. Hence, he decided to call the river Sungei Punggur – known later as Sungei Punggol.
So, what is the true meaning of “Punggol”? It could have been the action of hurling, a fruit-harvesting stick, a species of owl – or a fallen tamarind tree which refused to be cast away.
