What’s in a Name?
August 21st, 2011 by nanay
In deciding to name our child Benigno, an incredibly Filipino name foreign to most our son will ever encounter in his life, we’ve already found ourselves having to explain his name.
“What’s his name?”
“How do you spell that?”
“Interesting. Â Where is that from?”
I have resorted to saying, “Ben-ee-g-no. It’s spelled like “benign” with an “o” at the end. Â But you can just call him “Ben” for short.”
That usually provides the inquirer with relief. “Ahh an American nickname I can remember” is what I read on their faces as they hear a more familiar name.
Meanwhile, Lawrence and I continue to try to work on what exactly we’re going to call our son. Â For months while he was in utero, we called him “Bata David”, meaning “Kid David”, while we didn’t know his sex. Â We still sometimes refer to him as “the Bata” or “the Bats”. Â I like to call him Ben-Ben, in following the Filipino protocol of choosing a monosyllable sound that is twice repeated as the nickname. Â Lawrence seems stuck on “Benig”, with accent on the first syllable. Â It just sounds to guttural and ugly to me. Â And to top it off, my sisters call him “Benigs” with accent on the last syllable.
In yet another name fiasco, his last name on his medical records so far is “Cruz”. He was born so quickly that they stuck my name on his records. Â But his birth certificate reads “Benigno Erasmo David”. Â We’ll worry about that mess at a future time.
Poor Ben-Ben will have to deal with his name for the rest of his life. Â Good thing he’s named after Lawrence’s genius great-grandfather who with limited education translated Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” into Kapampangan, a Filipino dialect. Â He also happens to share a name with the most recent Filipino revolutionary, Benigno Aquino Jr.. As for his middle name, which I haven’t even touched here, it comes from my deceased father, whose compassion and passion for working with the disenfranchised I hope he can one day emulate. As it turns out, he also shares a close middle name with Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin’s physician grandfather who had earlier ideas about evolution strikingly close to his famous grandson’s. I guess Benig’s got a lot to live up to already with his large, long, foreign name.
how do you comment on these things? i am such a ludite! but look, i am reading a blog!
anywhoos you haven’t also commented on the hilarity of his “father’s” name– “castor”
who is this mysterious character?
SEE YOU SOOOOON!
lizzos
ps now i get so excited everytime i walk past a toy store. i cant wait to challenge big ben to a rousing game of anti-monopoly, a state regulating re-take on the classic.
This child was sired by a motor-oil.
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