Kampung Tintap got its name from the small river which runs through the kampung. The small river itself got its name from the tintap tree, a wide-leaf tree, which grew abundantly along and around the river.
The tintap trees have long been removed, cut down by people who wanted to make the riversides and the places around more habitual by domesticated animals and human. But the name adopted for the river and then the kampung remains. People, young people nowadays, wonder what a tintap tree looks like, if it at all, they thought, it was indeed a tree. Or, could one be thinking whethert it was infact actually an animal?
Kampung Tintap is in a Kadazandusun area and the name therefore is a Kadazandusun naming word. Had the place been inhabited by yet another race, the naming word for the kampung would have been in the language spoken by that particular race.
There is yet another place called Nyaris-Nyaris in a non-Kadazandusun area. The name therefore is assumed to have automatically been derived from the language of the residents of the places around. It is understood that the word means "nearly". Could it have meant that a hard-to-forget road accident nearly happened in that particular stretch sometime in the past?
Yet, in another place, a Dusun area, a kampung was given a phrase name … Kumawanan.. which literally means, going to the right. The name was even noblely used to officially register and call the Primary School situated in the kampung.
Such is the power of an agreement..a consensus.. a 'you agree, I agree' thing…When two or three people agree to call a place by an agreed name- reference word, then it is endosed by all.
It is very seldom to find a Kadazandusun word repeated twice to mean or to denote the plural form, e.g. tanak-tanak ku (my children).
There are words to denote plurality, e.g. tanak ku ngaavi' (my children), soviavi' tanak ku (all my children). The magic words are 'ngaavi' and 'soviavi' .
But, there was a kampung name which was formed by a word repeated twice. It was Kampung Sangai-Sangai. Sangai is a kadazandusun word which literally means 'reflection of oneself' or ' sun-shadow of oneself'. It could therefore be theorised that it did not mean 'a few reflections' or 'more than one shadow'. It could also mean 'namesake', two or more individuals sharing identical names.
Another unifying device of people and places, a design for soceity building is the renaming of kampungs into a common name, e.g. Kampung Dakata, where three kampungs grouped together to be under one kampung administrative JKKK! Kampung Dabak, Kampung Kambau, Kampung Tanaki, collectively form an example.
