Monday, July 4, 2011

How to use 'menamakan' correctly

Today I will discuss the correct usage of 'menamakan'. According to Kamus Pelajar publised by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and is the standard reference for all schools in Malaysia, 'menamakan' means ' memberikan sesuatu gelaran sebagai nama atau menjadikan sesutu sebagai nama' or 'to give the name of something to'. Another meaning is 'mencalonkan' or to nominate someone as the candidate.

Let us see how to use this word correctly.

If you are my students, you will have copied down the following to remember how to use this word. For the benefit of all readers of this blog, I will reproduce my classroom tips here:

The formula to remember is:
orang + menamakan + nama anak / kucing / kedai + kepada + anak / kucing / kedai
[person + menamakan + name of son/cat/shop + kepada (to) + son / cat / shop]
For convenience sake, I use kucing (cat) to represent all pets and kedai (shop) to represent buildings or places.

The correct usage is shown in the following sentences:
1 Johan menamakan Kassim bin Johan kepada anak bongsunya.
[Johan gave the name of Kassim bin John to his youngest son.]

2 Hashim menamakan Si Comel kepada kucing kesayangannya..
[Hashim gave the name of Si Comel to his favourite cat.]

3 Jutawan itu menamakan Wisma Impian kepada banglo barunya.
[The millionaire gave the name of Wisma Impian to his new bungalow.]

As for the second meaning, you can make a sentence such as the one below:
Kami menamakan Ali sebagai calon untuk bertanding sebagai Presiden kelab ini.
[We nominated Ali as the candidate to contest the post of President of this club.]

1 comment:

atje said...

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