Did you know: Sarawak was actually named after a mineral?

In school, some of us may have remembered a teacher or two mentioning that Sarawak was named that back in the 1800s after a Bruneian Governor gave the state to James Brooke and said “Saya serah pada awak“ (I give this to you). This phrase was later abbreviated to give Sarawak its modern name.

It’s a popular anecdote, but it’s highly unlikely to be true (do Borneans back then even say ‘awak’?), let alone for people to name the state after it. Historically, Sarawak’s name was likely already established long before Brooke was born: a list from the early 16th century by Portuguese historian de Barros mentioned ‘Cerava‘ as one of the principal ports of Borneo, probably referring to Sarawak.

So how did this Cerava name come about? While the word means nothing significant in Portuguese…

It might refer to the local word for stibnite, an alloy of antimony

Antimony is a chemical element (Sb), and while it may not be as famous as gold and silver, it’s still quite a valuable mineral, being used as ingredients for old-timey mascara (called kohl) or as ingredients to improve alloys, like those used in bullets. It’s commonly found in nature mixed with sulphur in a mineral called stibnite (aka antimonite), and the Sarawak River apparently had so much stibnite back then wars broke out over the mineral.

Stibnite seems to play a big enough part among the locals back then that we have a unique word for it: serawak. According to the fourth edition of Kamus Dewan, serawak is defined as “…stone ~ a type of mineral (ore) that contains sulphur and antimony“. So mystery solved – the land of hornbills is named after a mineral that shaped quite a bit of its history.

If you want to discover more interesting origins of our states’ names, pick one from the list below!

Kedah | Terengganu | Kelantan | Perlis | Johor

Selangor | Penang | Perak | Pahang | Malacca

Negeri Sembilan | Sabah | Sarawak | Federal Territories