ISSUE 16 | FALL 2013
Sound Filipino names are a mathematical equation. They are a phonetic puzzle: syllables chosen and shuffled, glued together and cut out like a memory game—can you figure out where the First Name went? The first template of a Filipino name is very simple. For the Baby Boomers, but also for anyone born between 1930 – 2010, the naming process adheres to the following premise:
Biblical First Name + Spanish Middle Names (anywhere from 1 - 5 of these) + Spanish, Chinese, Malay, or—rarely—old Tagalog Last Name For example:
Rebecca Maria Pilar Concepcion de la Cruz or Andrew Manuel Aquino Gokongwei or Marcus Alfonso Salazar Santiago Avelino Ocampo
Nicknames get a little more complicated.
When you hear some nicknames you immediately know a life story. Oldest sons are Kuya, and younger sons are Diko. Oldest daughters are Ate, younger daughters are Baby. If you meet someone named Baby you know she’s been the favorite all her life; she’s worn hand-me-down’s from someone named Ate. She’s the one her mother still treats, as her title suggests, like a child. Someone named Diko is bound to live under another man’s shadow. A Kuya has always set the standard, and so on. Other names connote a history. It’s not uncommon to find a Pinay named Girlie, or a Pinoy named Boy. English words with Filipino faces, a colonization chronicled by one moniker.
But others, indeed most, are nonsensically creative. My mother’s sister, for example, is formally known to the world as Clara Chayo Ramos. To us, she is Lay. If you can grasp it, that’s two-thirds of the first syllable of her first name (Clah), with half of the first syllable of her second (Chahy). Clara + Chayo = Lay
87