Raffin

What's in a Filipino name?

Seeing Senator Lacson having a spat with Senator Trillanes the other day made me think about Filipino names. Why? Because Lacson has an unusual given name.. Panfilio. It's Spanish, and as an adjective the meaning is "foolish", "simple", "dumb" etc. Interesting!

Then his nickname, "Ping". We all know that the Filipinos have a liking for these extra names to the extent that some famous people almost completely leave out their given names and just use the nickname.

But "Ping" is a bit unusual. "Bong" is very common, so I started to speculate that it was an attempt to make it similar, but as it couldn't be "Pong" then the next best choice was "Ping"? He's had a glittering career in the army and police, so it happens to be appropriate... "ping" being the high pitched sound of a bullet as it whistles by.

I got more interested, so I went through the lists of Senators and House Members.

In the Senate there's also a "Kiko".... and a "Koko"!

In the much larger House there is..

"Bingbong" A fusing together there?
"PingPing" Repetition.
But, haven't seen a "PingPong" yet.
"Kulit" A useful word here....meaning persistent...or worse!
"Bolet" Guessing...maybe French?...A famous pianist from the past? Or a mushroom?
"Mannix" A US detective TV series from the 70s!
"Sharky" Did he bite or maybe went in for some sharp practice?

Then there's a sister of the previous President...Maria Elena "Ballsy" Aquino-Cruz. Her nickname, more American English used perhaps, might describe her character as being determined, courageous....but it might also raise some people's eyebrows who would see it as a bit vulgar for a girl.

So, the Filipinos certainly are often adventurous with their choices of names, quite willing to have a laugh at themselves and not afraid to parade them.

Why....and any ideas on how those nicknames work here?

And, of course, do you have any other interesting examples?

scot47

The names have different meanings and connotations in Tagalog ?

Raffin

Some are Tagalog eg "Kulit", but for most there's no obvious meaning. Except that in the languages here repetition is generally common eg Lapu Lapu etc. Hence "Bong Bong" and
" Bing Bing". Someone helpfully called these "Doorbell names". I suppose the best example is "DingDong". But I can't find any explanation in English of how they come about.

I don't think there is a tradition of self deprecating nicknames, like "Kulit", in the West. Or that a woman would like to be called "Baby" into her old age!

One of the interesting things to me is that the families in my list from Congress are likely to be well educated, well traveled, especially to the US. But many of their nicknames wouldn't travel well. The parents of the previous President nicknamed another daughter "Pinky", a much more conventional choice than "Ballsy" for the US.

Stokkevn

The BBC had the same problem BBC News - Playful Filipino names hard to get used to

Englishmum

My daughter went to an international school in Singapore.

One of her classmates in the secondary school was a young man from the Philippines. His name was Gaylord....

Raffin

Also come across that one once.

Another given name which amuses me is Benhur. There's one in the House of Representatives, and another, a lawyer, just popped up on the local ANC channel.

A Hebrew derived name. Back to Charlton Heston in the 1959 film?

mikemike

i best keep quite

mikemike

if you can't beat them, best join them

Gazza-d

The local barangay capitals nickname is poncey. I suppose being a Gary mine would be Gaga.

MartynK

There was a very popular Indian restaurant in Hong Kong called the Gaylord. It might still be there, I don't know.

Raffin

They definitely like names of Roman,Greek and Biblical origin, at least some of those in power locally do. A look through a list of Mayors and Vice Mayors yielded the following:

Julius Cesar, Julius Caesar
Augustus Cesar
Mark Anthony

then..

Herminigildo
Mediatrix (think Trump would like that one!)

and finally,

BenSaulozacheus (how did his parents address him when he'd done something wrong?)

Gazza-d

They will all have pet names that are used within the family. My wife is known as Tess but her first name is Maria, how do you get from Maria to Tess, very easily actually. Maria Teresa goes to Maritess which goes to Tess.