page_title: Sentosa
section_title: Etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Sentosa / Etymology
context_page_description: Sentosa Island, known mononymously as Sentosa, is an island located off the southern coast of Singapore's main island. The island is separated from the main island of Singapore by a channel of water, the Keppel Harbour, and is adjacent to Pulau Brani, a smaller island wedged between Sentosa and the main island.
  Formerly used as a British military base and then a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, the island was renamed Sentosa and was planned to be a popular tourist destination. It is now home to a popular resort that receives more than twenty million visitors per year. Attractions include a 2 km long sheltered beach, Madame Tussauds Singapore, Kidzania, an extensive Cable Car network, Fort Siloso, two golf courses, 14 hotels and the Resorts World Sentosa, which features the Universal Studios Singapore theme park and one of Singapore's two casinos, the other being Marina Bay Sands.
  Sentosa is also widely known as being the location of the 2018 North Korea–United States Singapore Summit, where North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump met at the Capella Hotel located on the island.
context_section_description: The name Sentosa translates as "peace and tranquility" in Malay, which was in turn derived from the Sanskrit term Santosha, meaning "contentment, satisfaction". Sentosa was formerly known as Pulau Blakang Mati
  which in Malay means the "Island of Death Behind".
  The name Blakang Mati is old; an island was identified as Blacan Mati in Manuel Godinho de Erédia's 1604 map of Singapore. Other early references to the island of Blakang Mati include Burne Beard Island in Wilde's 1780 MS map, Pulau Niry, Nirifa from 1690 to 1700, and the nineteenth century reference as Pulau Panjang (J.H. Moor). However, early maps did not separate Blakang Mati from the adjacent island of Pulau Brani, so it is uncertain to which island the seventeenth century place names referred.
  The island has changed name several times. Up to 1830, it was called Pulau Panjang ("long island"). In an 1828 sketch of Singapore Island, the island is referred to as Po. Panjang. According to Bennett (1834), the name Blakang Mati was only given to the hill on the island by the Malay villagers on the island. The Malay name for this island is literally translated as "dead back" or "behind the dead"; blakang means "at the back" or "behind" or "after"; mati means "dead". It is also called the "dead island" or the "island of the dead" or perhaps "island of after death".
  Different versions of how the island came to acquire such an unpropitious name abound:
  One account attributed the ominous name to murder and piracy in the island's past.
  A second claimed that the island is the material paradise for the spirits of warriors said to have been buried at Pulau Brani.
  A third account claims that an outbreak of disease on the island in the late 1840s almost wiped out the original Bugis settlers on the island. Dr Robert Little, a British coroner investigating the deaths, stumbled upon what was called Blakang Mati Fever, purportedly a type of fever caused by miasmastic fumes arising from decaying leaves and swampy water on the island. This led to a controversy in medical circles at that time as to the causes of this disease.  The disease was later recognised in 1898 as malaria spread by the Anopheles mosquito. The government's malaria research station was originally located here.
  A fourth interpretation is that "dead back island" was so-called because of the lack of fertile soil on the hills. However, since the island creates an area of dead water behind it with no wind (hence "still behind" - still or stopped being an alternative translation of mati) it may be as simple as this — less romantic perhaps, but believable from a nautical viewpoint.
  In 1827, Captain Edward Lake of the Bengal Engineer Group in his report on public works and fortifications had proposed an alternative name for Blakang Mati as the "Island of St George". However, the island was seen as too unhealthy for habitation and his proposed name was never realised.
  In a 1972 contest organised by the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board, the island was renamed Sentosa, a Malay word meaning "peace and tranquility", from Sanskrit, Santosha.
caption: View from Imbiah Lookout to Mainland Singapore
exif: {"Image Make": "FUJIFILM", "Image Model": "FinePix6800 ZOOM", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2006:03:25 18:16:22", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "Copyright (C)   Calvin Teo", "Image ExifOffset": "264", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "842", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5929", "EXIF FNumber": "7", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2005:12:21 14:37:02", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2005:12:21 14:37:02", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3/2", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "46/5", "EXIF ApertureValue": "28/5", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "44/5", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "83/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "716", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "2678", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "2674", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed"}