What’s in a name?

Posted by Beng Alba-Jones on Monday, September 24, 2007 · 48 Comments 

Are you old enough to remember the Name Game song? It goes something like this:

“C’mon everybody, let’s play a game

I bet you I can make a rhyme out of anybody’s name…”

I’ve been thinking about names lately. A mental note is stuck on my head, reminding me to write a post about names. Let’s start with my name:

Beng is too short to be a real name so I guess those of you who don’t actually know me can surmise that it’s only a nickname. The only time I actually see my full name is when it’s printed on official documents, or embossed in credit cards, or when it appears on other cards such as my company ID, SSS, health card and so on. I have the same name as my mother. There were times, especially when she was still based here in the Philippines, when mails would arrive and I wouldn’t immediately open envelopes with my name on them. Because I wasn’t sure those letters were for me!

The story is I have a twin brother, a junior, with the same name as my father. My hypothesis goes: Pre-ultrasound days, my parents didn’t expect there’ll be two of us and when a boy suddenly appeared, the instinct was to name the boy after my father. When pressed for a name for the other twin, why not name her after the mother so they’ll be a pair? That might have seemed cute back them, or they just panicked. But for the record, there’s no actual “Jr.” in my birth certificate. Just my archaic-sounding name, with apologies to my mother who didn’t choose her name either.

Though my name might not officially make it to the “unusual names” list, I have met people whose names qualify. I know a dentist (and for a time a bit too well), who was born during the feast of the three kings. Everybody calls him “Mel” but his real name is “Balgamel”—a mix of the three kings’ names Baltazar, Gaspar and Melchor. Then just recently I learned that Jigs, the husband-to-be of a friend, is “Jigsaw” in real life. Our pastor named his second son “Genrev,” his way of making his son’s name “biblical” for the boy’s name is a compound of the first and last books of the Bible Genesis and Revelation. My former churchmate Brian and his wife Dana named their twin sons Blue and Red (They held off naming their sons who were born prematurely until they decided to stick with the supposedly temporary color names).

There are authors whose interesting names alone can sell books. There’s Stan Toler (I wonder if he’s a six-footer), and Dutch Sheets (Does he have a sister named Floral?) I don’t have any more time to tell you the names of people in seemingly wrong professions like our very own Cardinal Sin, and of Pastor Dollar (in the US). But to end this post, let me share the name of this internist who wins the Most Unusual Name in my book, bar none. The nurse told me his father is a mathematician, and he has another brother with a similarly formed name. For a second I was tempted to make an appointment, just to ask him how he copes with the endless questions he is surely getting from people like me whose interest is piqued:

I’m calling on Mathematicians out there who can tell me the significance of Dr Javier’s name. I tried googling it, to no avail. And I am opening the floor for you to share any unusual names you have come across with. More points go to those of you who actually know these people! So, have you got any names? Or does your name qualify? 🙂

PS: On the tricycle, on my way to work this am, I saw the name of the Tricycle Regulatory Office OIC: Restituto A. Pagsisihan. Talk about having “synonyms” for a name!

PS: And I remember another friend with the name “Great Bayani Mabuti” with siblings Genuine and Mahal. If you think his name is too “good” to be true, you better believe it!

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