A name, a road, a roadblock... then Eureka!

Yesterday, in jest, I had implied that Chin Swee Road means in Hokkien, "Beautiful Road". I assumed the road would have in fact been named after someone, and I thought of finding out a little more today.

I figured that Chin Swee must have been a local Chinese leader from Singapore's early post-1819 history. But, initially, I could not find any references to such a person.

At best, there were references to the Chin Swee Cave Temple in Genting Highlands, Malaysia. It is said that the name Chin Swee used there was a Fujian (Hokkien) diety with the title "reverend master" (note: reverend here is not used in the Christian sense) who could summon rains and drive away evil spirits.

Here's someone's blog posting that made such a reference:

http://chinsweetemple.blogspot.com/2008/01/introduction-to-chin-swee-caves-temple.html

But I had my doubts. So, I kept digging. Then I found these blog postings by someone with a very keen interest in finding out more about our street/road names:

http://remembersingapore.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/old-names-of-places/

http://remembersingapore.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/interesting-singapore-road-names/

From the first of these postings, we are told there was a Lim Chin Swee, hence the road name. But I still do not know who is Lim Chin Swee. Perhaps another time.

Postscript: There was also a Lim Chin Hon, and the road was Chin Hon Street. But it is no longer in existence.