What's in a name could be everything

The penchant of Filipinos for titles and honorifics is probably unmatched anywhere in the world. We are the only country where a person's name is all too willingly, sometimes insistently, substituted by that of a profession.

For instance, nowhere else in the world has the law profession managed with absolute success to replace all the first names of its practitioners with a single generic term than in the Philippines. In this country, all lawyers answer to the name "attorney."

I would not have wanted to write about this for fear of offending many of my friends who have effectively become strangers, in the sense that I now call them differently from what I used to call them when we were kids.

But a calling card thrust into my hand at a social function compelled me to come up with this piece. What I read in that card made it a very unsettling experience and I knew right then and there that I just had to write about this uniquely Philippine phenomenon.

The calling card was that of a town mayor. In a country where politics occupies the highest levels of the national consciousness, one would have thought that to go by the title of any elective political position would already constitute a very venerable form of tribute.

But my town mayor ( let us hide him under the name Juan dela Cruz ) obviously cannot part with his original profession. And so on that card were written in bold 14-point type the words "ENGR. JUAN DELA CRUZ." Underneath them, in smaller type, were the words "MUNICIPAL MAYOR."

Wow. That got me to wondering if my mayor, if ever blessed with the good fortune to get elected as governor, would still lead off his name with the abbreviation "ENGR." and so on and so forth until he becomes president.

I hate to disappoint my engineer friends, but the abbreviation "ENGR." is in fact not a title. It is not even honorific. It is a job description that normally has no place of honor before a name. Except, of course, in the Philippines.

In the Philippines, even the names of barangay councilmen are preceded by the honorific "HON." as in honorable. Well, I have no problem with anyone trying to attach honor to his name. But honor is unsolicited. It is given, not demanded. To impose honor is to demean and cheapen it.

I do not know when this penchant for titles and honorifics started growing in the core of the Filipino's consciousness. But I do remember in my youth houses bedecked with billboards announcing to all and sundry the names and professions of all who lived in those houses.

Cebu is a premier province, so it is quite common to see that the professional "titles" being advertised in these house billboards would be those of attorneys-at-law, notarios publico, doctors of medicine, certified public accountants, and the various types of engineers.

But in outlying provinces, where there is a marked difficulty in affording these "higher" professions, I have seen similar billboards proclaiming professional "titles" as public school teachers and midwives.

Maybe this penchant owes its existence in the core of the Filipino's consciousness to the fact that even until now, the Philippines remains to be a very poor country. As such education is less of a right than it is an achievement.

To be able to successfully educate one's children is perhaps then the crowning glory of all parents. It becomes a source of pride for a family. To have attained a degree is something to crow about.

Thus, who cares if one is named after Brad Pitt if he does not have the title with the proper ring to it coming first in the introduction. The Filipino would rather be called Procopio for as long as there is an "ATTY." before it. Right "Torney?"