A curious omission

1. As fate would have it, I grew up not knowing much about my father’s background especially about his side of the family and about his working life. It was not until very late in life in 2013 at the age of 66 that I began to do research on my father.

2. By virtue of that, I was able to trace my lineage to Mohamad Merican Noordin, a well-known merchant from George Town, Penang. A patriarch of the Noordin clan, he rose to prominence within the first three decades of the 19th century.

3. I have no doubt that Mohamad Noordin was my great-grandfather. In the book The Chulia in Penang (2014), the author wrote that he had six sons, the eldest being Vapoo Merican Noordin who had two sons namely Mohamad Hussain and Mohamad Ismail. The latter was without doubt my father who was a civil servant and worked under the government of Kedah.

4. In my original birth certificate my father’s name was written M Ismail Marikan bin Vappoo Marikan Nordin. (I have mentioned about the misspelling of names in my recent post of 9 July 2019.) A long time ago, my grandfather’s name made me realise that my father was of Indian descent and I thought that Marikan must be a sort of surname, but I could not figure out if ‘Nordin’ (or Noordin) was of any significance.

5. It was not until a few years back that I found out ‘Nordin’ was adopted as a family name after the patriarch. In the above mentioned book, the names of Mohamad Noordin’s male offsprings all bore the family name Noordin. As a matter of fact, the author referred to my father as Mohamad Ismail Merican Noordin (M.I.M Noordin).

6. As I’ve mentioned in my recent post of 9 July 2019, I had obtained a copy of my birth certificate from the registration office on 1 July 2019 because the original was in tatters. But much to my surprise, I noticed certain omission in the copy in that my grandfather’s name was simply printed Vappoo instead of Vappoo Marikan Nordin as written in the original.

7. I consider this a curious omission due to the fact that the duplicate of my birth record should tally with the original in my possession. But then the duplicate might have been in bad condition that had caused the omission.

8. I need to go back to the registration office to settle this problem. It won’t be easy because the original document is also in bad condition and the writing is barely legible.