Talk:Kuala Sungai Buloh
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Relationship to ‘Sasaran’
[edit]I've asked at least four inhabitants of the town of Sungai Buloh what the relationship is between the names Sungai Buloh and Sasaran. (All were Chinese speakers.) One (aged about thirteen) only knew of the town as Sasaran, and apparently didn't even know that the town was called Sungai Buloh; another said that Sasaran is part of Sungai Buloh; one simply said that Sasaran and Kuala Sungai Buloh are the same, and a fourth said more specifically that Sasaran and Sungai Buloh are the same, with Sungai Buloh being the Malay name, while Sasaran is the name used by Chinese speakers. I see ‘Sasaran’ in Malay-language shop names (so the name ‘Sasaran’ must be at least recognized by non-Chinese); though I don't think I've seen such a shop that doesn't also have a Chinese name, so it could still be that the name ‘Sasaran’ is used mainly only by Chinese speakers.
There is a shop that is only just inside the (northern) boundary of Kuala Sungai Buloh (i.e. only slightly south of the ‘Sungai Buloh’ road sign) that has ‘Sasaran’ in its name, which suggests that Sasaran is synonymous with rather than just part of Sungai Buloh. (If ‘Sasaran’ does refer to only a part of Sungai Buloh, then Jalan Sasaran likely either borders or runs through that part.)
If Sasaran is synonymous with Sungai Buloh, then it could be that the name Sasaran came into use to avoid confusion with either the river or the region of Petaling, with the new name being taken from Jalan Sasaran (which is near the centre of town, and near many of the shops of the town). If instead Jalan Sasaran is named as the road that leads to the town of Sasaran, then that still leaves us the question of how the town came to be known as both Kuala Sungai Buloh and Sasaran in Malay.
Maps make no mention of the name Sasaran, other than in the street name Jalan Sasaran mentioned above.
It's not simply that Sasaran is the Chinese translation of Kuala Sungai Buloh: sasaran (and sasar) are normal Malay words, whereas there are two common renditions of ‘Sasaran’ in Chinese characters, namely 傻傻然 (pinyin sha3sha3ran2) and 沙沙蘭 (traditional) / 沙沙兰 (simplified) (pinyin sha1sha1lan2), so evidently they come from an existing Malay word Sasaran rather than being translations of Sungai Buloh.