Image from realbollywood.com |
Can you imagine hearing this line in a movie: Hi, my name is Bond -- James "The Real Thing" Bond, son of Joseph "The Original" Bond of Lexington, England, not to be mistaken for James "The Earl" Bond of Norwich?
It's such a mouthful that the snappy and memorable James Bond name becomes a loose and forgettable punchline.
Allow me to use self-deprecating humor as I try to expunge a rather embarrassing deed that stemmed from a knee-jerk reaction, out of my system. You see, today is the first month of my blog at Blogger. And I can't get over the fact that I named it "therealcuriousbiker," as if somebody was pretending to be me, or worse, has the same wild imagination as to put curious and biker together -- oh my, the height of conceit, and I'm in the middle of it!
A little more than a month ago, my first web host Wordpress suspended my original blog www.curiousbiker.com because of a spam intrusion (They have reinstated it, but I have since moved on). Devastated but determined to post my Christmas story Wish, I decided to open a new one at Blogger -- this site.
curiousbiker.com no more |
But what's in a name, really? Well, judging by the amount of time that most expectant parents deliberate and sometimes argue over it, then I guess it's a lot.
From digital-photography-school.com |
But no. Being proletariats (masa, if you're having a hard time) themselves, my parents did not have time for humor nor of keeping me away from future insecurity. I was born a day after an anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law. So with a little tweak on the spelling, I was named after a horrendous event in our nation's history. And I was not even born on the exact anniversary! I suppose because I was a fairly long baby -- all 22 inches of me -- my mother probably started to labor on the 20th, saw my feet came out on the 21st (exact anniversary), but by the time my entire body popped out, it was already the 22nd. But I don't have any recollection of my birth, nor of the time when I was baptized with my permanent name, who knows, perhaps they were asking me "O anak, anong gusto mong pangalan mo?" But what can a baby do? I couldn't even mutter dada then, let alone Keith. So when the first sound that came out of me was a wail, then it was settled -- I would be named Marcial, and there's nothing I could do about it.
From westoncommunication.org.uk |
When we grew older, and without us talking about it, me and most of my brothers separately introduced ourselves as Jinx when we each went into college in the big city. Jinx is short for Enjinx, a name resulting from the mispronunciation of our family name Enginco, which should be pronounced "en-hing-ko," and not "en-ging-ko" as was the common mistake of many. Jinx had a nice ring to it, kind of mysterious and a bit on the naughty side. It also gave a thin veneer of confidence to an insecure probinsyano suddenly immersed in city lights.
From pinoyexchange.com |
But his school ID, which he clipped (ID laces were still in the invention stage) so that his name and picture faced his chest, clearly stated, in capital letters that he was DELFIN -- a name that conjures a picture of a short, buri-hatted, dark-skinned man wearing kamisa-de-chino and canvas drawstring pants, holding on to a bayong containing native chicken; certainly, not some gorgeous hunk who made girls swoon with a drop of his fingers.
Rustico or Allan? From baliktanaw.wordpress.com |
But I called him Allan just as long as he called me Jinx. And we were friends with Charlie Brown -- and that's his real name and nickname, which suited him for he was a chubby, rosy-cheeked Chinese-mestizo, English-speaking conyo. By then, I was beginning to like the sound of my name as my Manilenyo classmates pronounced it with a rolling "r" and a sliding "s" so it sounded more like Morr-sshhall, than the jologs sounding Mar-syal.
There are always exceptions to the rule though as proletariat names can sometimes be very cool, too. My best friend in college was named Pag-alay, which I thought was most appropriate for a very pretty and very intelligent girl; a perfect offering or a gift to the gods if ever there was one. Her father, a nationalistic lawyer, named her two other brothers Pag-alab ang Pag-diwang. Those are cool names according to my standards.
I guess giving children names that they won't like was contained in the first editions of Good Parenting magazine, to fortify the child's character as he grows older. You know, overcome an insecurity and you become more secure of yourself, and thus more in control of what you can do? Or it could have been an old-school ploy to make a child mature into a fighter who would redeem his proletariat-sounding name to announce to the world that: I am Marcial and you are reading my blog, or I am Delfin and I'm going to operate on your heart, or I am Pag-alay and I am going to save you from lethal injection!
I no longer hate my name, in fact I love it -- Marcial I. Enginco. It sounds strong and authoritative, respectable even. It sounds, well, me. And yes, I am also therealcuriousbiker. Nothing wrong with it either, right?
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My mother taught me long ago that I should always put my middle initial every time I write my name, in honor of her family lineage -- the Itliongs of Pozorrubio, Pangasinan.
I'd like to know what you think of this article. Please leave a comment or a reaction. And if you did not like your name as well what did you do so that you eventually grew into it?
funny! really, our names have a bit of history however trite...
ReplyDeleteThank you ma'am Sylvia! You're right, our names indeed play a part in how our personalities are shaped and how we remember our journey.
ReplyDeleteEvery name has a story : ) It's interesting how our parents come up with it. You may think its funny, but I'm not married nor do I have any kids, but I have a list of names for babies I plan to have in the future.
ReplyDeleteThank you for leaving a comment Andrea. Whatever names you're planning to give your kids, I hope that they will also evoke happy stories and experiences, as mine had.
ReplyDelete