Aside from FLIP,PHILLY and FILO, what other nicknames do Filipinos have?

Question

Aside from FLIP,PHILLY and FILO, what other nicknames do Filipinos have?

Answer 1

FOREIGNERS often ask why Filipinos are constantly concocting nicknames, changing them as frequently as we do cell phone covers.

There's a paradox here. I suspect we keep renaming ourselves because Filipino parents are rather unreflective in the choices of their children's legal names, which means some Filipinos end up spending their entire lives trying to shed those names.

Blame it maybe on the Spaniards, who oversimplified things by telling us to name the child after the saint of the day. That probably worked out for most of the three centuries they were here but when the Americans took over, it became chic to have names like Joe and Fred so those who had the more traditional names then rechristened. Sometimes it was fairly easy, such as Jaime becoming Jim. Other changes were a bit more drastic, Fidel Ramos became Eddie, for example. I'm sure you can cite other examples of how Procopios and Urbanas reinvented themselves.

Today, most Filipino parents have abandoned the Catholic liturgical calendar and now name their children after politicians and show-biz personalities. Again, as the children grow up they may find themselves trying to shed off those names as celebrities fall from favor.

Those named after saints and sinners, oops, I meant politicians and movie stars, are the luckier ones. As I said, Filipino parents can be whimsical, almost playful in their choices of names. Remember that Filipino pilot, whose surname was Come (pronounced as two syllables) and whose parents gave him the name of "Wel" so he could be "Mr. Wel Come"? The name certainly didn't help when he flew to the States last year and met American immigration authorities who had received a false tip that he and a friend were terrorists. Wel Come was, well, not welcome.

I have a friend whose legal name is Jiffy, which he got because he was born "in a hurry, and in a jeepney" as his mother was rushing to the hospital. He dislikes the name tremendously and prefers J.D. or even plain old Jepoy. Eventually, he'd like to get a more dignified legal name. (The law allows these name changes if you can prove that your given name causes you embarrassment, or attracts ridicule. Be ready, however, to spend for the court proceedings.)

These strange names aren't always the parents' fault. At times, I suspect the practical jokers are the civil registrars, or the hospital personnel, who ask the parents what name they want to give and write them out as it is pronounced, no matter how odd they may be. If the parents are Visayan then you get all kinds of mutations on what would otherwise have been stigma-free names. My parents' mayordoma wanted to name her child "Judy," but being Ilongga, got "Jodie" instead on the birth certificate. Which isn't too bad, really. Think of the wannabee Joels who ended up Jewels.

Younger Filipinos seem to be more serious now about naming their children. One of my readers, Grace Mamolo, wrote in last week to say she and her husband, Charles Benjamin, were resisting pressures to name their still unborn son "junior" or after one of their relatives. Children, Grace explains, should be their own persons.

Grace and Charles are also looking into the possibilities of "Filipino names" and asked me for suggestions. Which was when I realized we don't have that many. From what I remember, members of the Philippine Independent Church were the first to challenge the old Spanish "saint of the day" tradition. Which is why you had names like Magtanggol for males and, for females, Ligaya, Luzviminda (Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao), Lualhati, Bituin, Diwata, Tala, Amihan.

Notice the gender skewing here, with more Filipino names for females than for males. Some parents do name their sons after Filipino heroes, for example, Rizal (and Rizalino) and Bonifacio but the range is still limited. During the activist era of the '70s, there was a new search for Filipino names but, reflecting the turbulent times, you ended up with names like "Rebo" (for Rebolusyon).

I looked through our folk tales but didn't find the names too enticing. I do like Alunsina, the goddess who left her male chauvinist husband in tears, those tears becoming our first rain, but that's also a female name. Her husband, who I presume became more gender-sensitive later, was named Tungkung Langit, not too suitable for our times.

Then there are precolonial datus' names, but I'm not sure if Grace's son will relish being called Lapu-lapu. Others to consider: Lakandula, Sikatuna (but that's also a subdivision name) and Humabon, but that last datu was cozy with Magellan.

We might want to pick up examples from our Asian neighbors. Irwan Hidayana, an anthropologist friend teaching at the University of Indonesia, sent me some popular names they use. For females, I particularly liked Dewi (goddess), Dian (a little lamp, something enlightening), Mega (cloud), Sari (essence), Puspa and Sekar (flower), Cinta (pronounced Tsinta, love). For males, they have Prana (aura), Agung (great), Kelana (adventurer), Satria (knight), Teguh (strong, firm), Wahid (number one), Cahya or Cahyo (light).

I think we should bear in mind that the concept of a "Filipino name" is itself elusive. Even in the precolonial period some of the names already reflected external influences--Rajah Soliman's name, for example, is Arabic. Ultimately, a name is Filipino--Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilokano, Maranao, Kankanay, English, Spanish, Javanese--if it captures our spirit, our ethos.

Answer 2

those arent nicknames those are slurs. Its like calling an Italian a w*p, a chinese a c***k or a Native American a skin.