There is something very fishy in the use of anti-colonial hero Lapu-Lapu’s name as the name of the popular grouper fish that we love to eat! How many tens of thousands of housewives and cooks marinate, stir-fry or steam lapu-lapu every day throughout this archipelago? It is downright insane and sacrilegious to do this to the first man to have vanquished the Spanish colonizers and killed Ferdinand Magellan in Mactan!
I believe it is a sad reflection on the miserable quality of political leadership in this republic for generations that our morally feeble, cowardly and intellectually lazy power elite has for so long allowed this insult on the valiant Lapu-Lapu to continue unrectified. In fact, I have a strong suspicion that some sneaky wise guys among our Spanish colonizers conspired to call the grouper fish lapu-lapu as an insult on the man who had first humiliated them!
Our legislature now has a thousand pending bills. Since I’m certain a lot of these bills in our legislative mill are nonsense or self-serving rubbish, may this humble citizen propose a new bill: Changing the popular vernacular name of the grouper fish from lapu-lapu to Magellan. I’m sure even the self-righteous party-list leftist radicals in Congress would support this bill, which will make all of us better relish the culinary experience of eating an inihaw na Magellan for dinner.
In ancient China, proper name-calling ethics dictated absolute reverence for the leader and citizens were not even allowed to write the name or to look at the face of the emperor.
Philippine society has no real aristocracy, the way European has royalty or nobility, but we are big on honorific titles like "monsignor," "ambassador," and even "attorney," "engineer," "don" and "doña," but why do we care less for the title of our presidents? Is it because of our low regard for our politicians in past decades that we don’t think of them as awe-inspiring? Or, is it due to our having been too overly politicized in USA-style democracy that we all think we can become a better president or smarter legislators than those currently in power?
When I discussed this oddity with an American businessman, he laughed and said: "You do that only to GMA, Estrada and Aquino, but not to those presidents who you think might shoot you, like ex-dictator President Marcos or ex-General Ramos, whom Filipinos do not call Ferdie or Eddie."
I couldn’t yet digest the fact that the vice president, whom we already casually address by the nickname Noli, still insists in calling himself Kabayan. Our two biggest TV networks have also adopted their own Noli-style populist nicknames – GMA 7 as "Kapuso" and ABS-CBN 2 as "Kapamilya."
Many of Philippine-style nicknames reflect what I would diagnose as a "Peter Pan complex," or the Filipino people’s healthy and all-consuming wish to be eternally young. No matter how old or high up in stature, we refer to men and women by their nicknames, which Westerners usually use only for toddlers. An American businessman told me that his aging mother laughed so loud when he informed her by long distance call that his friend Dinky Bantug was introducing him to a mayor nicknamed Peewee.
In our society, we call many adults Baby, like a socialite and rumored ex-presidential mistress. Other mature guys still enjoy being called Boy or Babes. Henry Sy’s eldest son who is in his ‘50s is called Big Boy. A banker once nominated by President Ramos as finance secretary is Boy Blue del Rosario and a Makati congressman who already has graying hair is still called Teddy Boy. A bank owner and TV station tycoon is called Tony Boy, while President GMA’s younger brother already in his 50s is still called Buboy by bankers and stockbrokers. A Stanford-educated executive is called Bombit Consunji. Manila Rep. Miles Roces and banker Simon "Mon" Roces Paterno once mentioned that the elder men in their Roces clan had many fascinating nicknames like Tuting, Tutung, etc. I recently read that Dr. Vicki Belo has a son named Quark.
Westerners told me that our Philippine-style spaghetti is not authentic because it is too sweet. Is it because our republic used to be a world power in sugar exports? Is this also the rationale why many nicknames sound diabetic, such as Sugar, Peaches, Honey Pie, Honey Boy, Cherry Pie, Peachy, Tootsie, Apples, et al? At least, I have not yet met someone with the nickname Buko Pie!
In the Spanish language, I recall that we don’t pronounce the "h" in some words like "hombre" or "hora." Was it part of the Filipino people’s secret desire to rebel against 333 years of oppressive rule by snooty colonizers and their lack of "h" that, up to this day, a lot of our nicknames have "h"? How many of your acquaintances are called Jhonny, Jhun, Whally, Lhenn, Ghabby, Ghina, Ghemma, Jhimmy or Lhenny?
Why is it that the Philippines is perhaps the only nation with nicknames that sound like the names of Snow White’s seven dwarfs or like doorbell chimes? The late Chief Justice Claudio Teehankee was a serious man but he had for a nickname Dingdong. Atty. Ricardo Puno Jr. is called Dong like many males in our republic, while other folks are fondly called Ding. Thank goodness, no cruel parent has christened their kid Dingding! Our Social Welfare Secretary is Dinky Soliman.
Sounding similar to bells or chimes are such nicknames as Ling, Ding, Dong, Teng, Tong, Enteng (like Enteng Kabisote, the film), Ling Ling, Long Long, Undersecretary Ting Ting (who’s husband is former Congressman Peping), Ping Ping Lechon, Teng Teng, et al. So far, I have not yet bumped into a person with the nickname Wang Wang or Ping Pong.
Lapu-Lapu was not only the first person in our tropical isles to slay a Spanish colonizer. He was probably also the pioneer in another fascinating phenomenon – Philippine society’s love for repetitive names. Is it because most people in our society are poor listeners, so we have to repeat again and again? Tarlac Rep. Benigno Aquino III is Noynoy, his kin is Bambam Aquino and the son of his late father Ninoy’s rival is Ilocos Norte Governor Ferdinand Marcos II with the nickname Bongbong. A former sexy starlet and now wife of a Romualdez is known as Kring Kring, Dolphy’s lover is the singer Zsa Zsa Padilla, while top female TV broadcasters have names like Tintin Bersola and Cheche Lazaro.
Batangas Rep. Hermilando Mandanas is Dodo, Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay was named by his parents after Jesus, Joseph and Mary, but he is more popular as Jojo. Then there are actress Chin Chin Gutierrez, Congressman Dudut Jaworski, and other repetitive names such as Dada, MacMac, Mikmik, Bingbing, Dicdic, Detdet, Letlet, Tonton, Teng Teng, Jun Jun, Mai Mai, Jingjing, Ningning, Nongnong, Nognog, Koko, Mon-Mon, John John, Bumbum, Tet Tet, Vic Vic, etc. etc.
The country’s exquisite orchid from Mindanao is the waling waling. Is this repetitive name phenomenon the inspiration for our calling that native festival in Aklan Ati-Atihan, that traditional theater form as moro-moro, native amulets as anting-anting, illusions as guni-guni, our favorite summer dessert as halo-halo, that high-cholesterol but delicious dish as kare-kare, and that other local dish as dinengdeng?
Perhaps, the menfolk harvesting coconuts in ancient times couldn’t clearly hear their wives calling for lunch, so the Tagalog phrase for "Are you coming down?" is "Bababa ka na ba?" For those ancient folks who were shivering in fear and couldn’t hear clearly, people had to ask "Kakabakaba ka ba?" which means "Are you nervous?"
Nowadays, bargain-hunting people seem to enjoy buying ukay-ukay goods in tiangges. During Christmas, a recreation area near CCP is called Boom na Boom. Street corner stores are called sari-sari, while small items are sold tingi-tingi. The country’s wealthiest billionaire Lucio Tan perhaps already knew this national fondness for repetitive names and cashed in with his Asia Brewery’s Beer na Beer brand. Even the Hispanic Zobel-Ayala clan had caught on, calling their newest mall Market! Market! Will Ben Chan follow next with Bench na Bench, or Jollibee with Jolly-Jolly and maybe Burger McDo changing its name to MacMac?
In the 20th century, the late rags-to-riches restaurateur Ma Mon Luk had a clever marketing gimmick by claiming to have invented in Manila the age-old Chinese chicken broth noodle dish mami since it rhymes with his name. Ma was so clever in use of names and had really, delicious foodstuff he was acclaimed the mami king.
A lot of us have Chinese parents who love Western-sounding names like Wilson, Jackson, Wellington, Washington, Lexington, even Nixon named after the disgraced ex-President of Watergate fame. My high school classmate is an architect called Jefferson Tomas; he’s so lucky his parents didn’t call him Mang.
When Robina Gokongwei-Pe was pregnant, she said she will not call her child Thor if it’s a boy and definitely not Ina if it’s a girl, or else they’d be mischievously made fun of as Thor-pe or Ina-pe! During the wake of FPJ, whose real name was Ronald Alan Poe and whose youngest sister is my real estate client, the teary-eyed widow Susan Roces laughed two times when I introduced one of my friends by his real name Ronald Alan Ko.
Actually, the first ethnic Chinese offered a cabinet-rank post was not my uncle Ambassador Howard Dee as presidential adviser on indigenous minorities or later Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap. It was rumored to be my high school classmate Andy Lim, whom GMA had first offered the Energy Secretary portfolio of Vince Perez, but he declined due to his name rhyming with the Tagalog "ang dilim" ("It’s dark!").
If politicians are corrupt with huge sums of money and they are caught, let time pass and lawyers obfuscate facts and they shall eventually regain power and be called "honorable." However, when a poor bureaucrat steals only a few thousand pesos, he will immediately be paraded on TV as a criminal and jailed for years. If a famed politician’s daughter keeps falling for married guys and gets embroiled in scandals, she is "liberated," but when a poor girl has the same problem, she is called "malandi."
The cutesy Peter Pan names, the diabetic, door chime and repetitive nicknames, all of these are innocuous Philippine cultural quirks. However, let us not trivialize the personal reputation of a hero like Lapu-Lapu or commit other tawdry misuse of names!
Let us redeem the honor of Lapu-Lapu by disassociating it from that fish, no matter how delicious! Also, who was that other victim Datu Puti? Was he another anti-colonial hero? Why is our society so callous we also insult his memory by allowing a vinegar factory to use his name as its brand and to have a funny-looking bald man with a weird smirk as his symbol? Instead of our shameless politicians defacing our cities and erasing history with barbaric bills changing street names in honor of their fellow politicians, why don’t they uphold culture by rectifying ridiculous names?
The pre-Hispanic Filipinos worshipped anitos. Even if Philippine society is no longer pagan and majority are now Christian, is it alright to allow a motel chain to use the brand name Anito?
Last, but not the least, why do we blindly and negatively accept and call as Flipino time that despicable bad habit of being atrociously late, which I strongly believe is actually part of the cultural garbage from 333 years of Spanish colonial misrule?