What’s in a Filipino name?

“Luciano?  Oh your husband must be Italian!” 

“Oh, nope he’s Filipino.”

This is the most common conversation I have about my last name.  It is funny, sometimes people don’t believe me and insist that I am wrong, that my husband must have some Italian in him somewhere because of his last name.  This caused me to look into how my husband got an Italian-sounding last name.  I find the story fascinating!  Here’s the brief version I paraphrased from this blog post:

Basically, the Philippines were a colony of Spain for over 300 years.  During that time people did not yet have official last names.  Instead they were often known by their children, for instance Allan would be “Allan, father of Jakob”.  When Spain came they brought Catholicism and the people where Christianized, taking more official last names.  But the problem was everyone wanted to be named after a saint.  So there were groups and groups of people called “de la Cruz”.  Some siblings didn’t even take the same last name, so then you had families related to each other but with different last names.  All of this confusion made it hard for Spain to tax the Filipino people.

So, after about 300 years of this confusion, the Spanish government decided to take action. In 1849, Governor Narciso Clavería … released the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos or the Alphabetical catalogue of surnames, which contained 60,662 surnames, both Spanish and indigenous... The catalogue was distributed to the head of each province who was required to figure out how many surnames each town would need and then assign them alphabetically. A list of the allotted surnames for each town was given to its parish priest who instructed the barangay (neighbourhood) officials to summon the oldest male member of every family to choose a family name and have it entered into the new civil register. (read more here)

          Thus, today now you have the majority of Filipinos with Spanish sounding last names.  So our last name, Luciano, was just one of the 60,662 names in the catalogue that Allan's great great great great (you get the picture) grandpa picked for the family.  If you take the time to read the blog post I referenced, you will also learn about other variations of surnames, Chinese names and even distinctly Filipino names. But interesting enough, even those surnames that have a Chinese or indigenous-Filipino background were "Spanish-ized" to take on a more Spanish spelling.

           Along with last names, another way Filipinos use names is through nicknames.  I remember when Allan and I were going through the guest list for our wedding, I would ask him “which relative is this?”  To which he would answer, “uh I don’t know.”  I accepted that answer for the first couple names on his side, but when I got this answer for almost every other person I started to get suspicious.  How can he not know the names of his family members?  He explained quickly, “nicknames, we use nicknames.”  Here are some excerpts from an article giving examples of the wide variety of nicknames used among Filipinos:

Noynoy - the President, who's real name is Benigno Aquino

Joker Arroyo - a Senator, named from his father's love of playing cards.  Joker's brother is Jack

Erap - the former President Joseph Estrada, because when you spell Erap backwards it becomes Pare, which means mate or buddy

Jejomar Binay - the Vice President, a combination of "Jesus Joseph Mary"

          So how do you figure out your Filipino nick name?  Well I guess almost anything goes!  Cut and slice the parents names together - I would be "Roda" (Robert and Wanda).  Or take the last syllable of your name, instead of the first - did you know Allan's nickname is Lan and not Al?  How about taking syllables from many names you have and form one simple name - mine could be "Dream" (Sandra Jean), and our son Jakob's could be "Kobler" (Jakob Adler).

          So what’s your Filipino nick name?  In a country that has been colonized and influenced by many outsiders over the years, the nick name is often the only truly Filipino identity they have in their name.

This is Dream signing off.