Bekasi Regency

Bekasi Regency (Indonesian: Kabupaten Bekasi; Betawi: Kabupatén Bèkasi; Sundanese: ᮊᮘᮥᮕᮒᮦᮔ᮪ ᮘᮨᮊᮞᮤ, romanized: Kabupatén Bekasi) is a regency (kabupaten) of West Java Province, Indonesia. Its regency seat is in the district of Central Cikarang. It is bordered by Jakarta Special Region (the administrative cities of North Jakarta and East Jakarta) and by Bekasi City (which is a separate administration from the Regency) to the west, by Bogor Regency to the south, by Karawang Regency to the east and by the Java Sea to the north.

This highly urbanised area (largely suburban to Jakarta to its west) has a land area of 1,157.73 km² (447.00 sq mi) and contained 2,630,401 people at the 2010 Census and 3,113,017 at the 2020 Census, with an average density of 2,570 inhabitants per square kilometre (6,700/sq mi). The official estimate as at mid 2024 was 3,387,601, making it the fourth most populous regency in Indonesia after Bogor Regency, Bandung Regency and Tangerang Regency. The figures for Bekasi Regency exclude the area and population of the separate City of Bekasi (with 2,644,058 inhabitants in mid 2024), which lies between the Regency and Jakarta, and has been independent of the Regency since 16 December 1996.

The earliest evidence of the existence of Bekasi dates from the 5th century according to the Tugu inscription, which describes the name of two rivers that run through the city, i.e. Candrabhaga and Gomati and one of those rivers, i.e. Candrabhaga is the origin of the name Bekasi where the name Candrabhaga evolved into Bhagasasi due to the Sanskrit word candra which means moon evolved into Old Javanese word ‘sasi’ which also means moon and then the name Bhagasasi was misspelled as Bhagasi and then Dutch colonial government also misspelled the name Bhagasi as Bacassie and finally it became Bekasi.