Name Game

Ever wondered what it would be like if we humans can give ourselves our own first names?
By this, I mean postponing having a name until such a time when an individual is old enough to choose his/her own. Then our names can reflect who we really are or who we want to be.

It would be so fulfilling to have called yourself Robert or Roberto instead of Marianito, or a Samantha instead of a Simang, or even Alexandra rather than Kwatang (which was our pet name for our youngest sister when she was a toddler).

Rustom Padilla chose the unique name Bebe Gandanghari when he changed his persona to a she. In one article, she said Bebe stands for Binibini (Madame). I suspect that she, instead of the phrase-name Gandanghari (kingly beauty), wanted GandangReyna (queenly poise or beauty). Or it could be that she is Kapampangan and wanted to tell us that Gandanghari is really descriptive of her newfound female-ness, (gandang ari). Or a third conjecture is that she wanted to merge the old and the new personas she's got: Bebe (female gentleness) and Gandanghari (male beauty).

We Pinoys are fond of calling (binyagan) people names. If there were two Marianos in the neighbourhood, we would call one, Nanong Pandak, and the other Nanong Tangkad. Or if a Hilario was limping, we'd call him Hilario Pilayo.

Nene, a most common Pinoy nickname is almost unmanageable. In the street where I grew up, there were at least six girls named Nene. One, a daughter of a Chinese Dad, became known as Neneng Koreana; another one who lived by the riverbank, was called Neneng Ilog; a third one, grew up as Neneng Itay, because her Nanay was named Benita (Itay, for short) ; another one became Neneng Bebay, not because she could do syllabication(baybay) but because her Mom was my Aunt Ginoveva (Bebay). And of course, there's my own sister, called Neneng Goly (Goly from Gloria, the name of our dear mother).

Another naming- incident I can recall was when I was attending the university in Diliman. In our Spanish 11 class, there were two guys named Melchor. Our mean female instructor (Senorita GV) christened one, Melchor Guapo and the other, Melchor Feo. Yes, Melchor Guapo was good-looking allright, but Melchor Feo, was not bad-looking, merely, not as attractive as the Guapo. For one whole semester, Melchor Feo would be blushing. Poor guy could not hide his embarassment!

In the office where I worked last, I dealt with a lot of internationally-trained professionals, and because my name is not an English name, it ended up being mis-pronounced all the time. Filipinos would pronounce it correctly as Hener (Gener) but Canadians and Americans would pronounce it as Jen-ner. This is how it is generally pronounced by colleagues and new acquaintances. Others would pronounce it as Jiner (some French and Turkish) and one boss even called me Gue-ner ( as in Guer-rero or Gershwin), while others called me John.

And because one niece fondly refers to me as " Uncle Generous," I adopted it as my cybername as in mrgener_ous, but most family calls me Gene.