Names and Filipinos

Recent events have proven that Filipinos are not new to “reinventions”. We know from the ongoing zarzuela in the Senate that alleged POGO mastermind Alice Leal Guo is supposedly Guo Hua Ping. A recent addition to the circus being performed by our senators and house representatives is Jessica Francisco, who authorities say is the 1998 textbook scammer Mary Ann Maslog who was reported dead since being found guilty years ago. Authorities have referred to both by their alleged “real names”, though both insist on being called by their “real” identity.

This issue on what the real name is touches on a deeper, human concern about identity with an even deeper concern among Asians. While many today use Western naming systems (i.e. given or first name followed by a last name), many cultures still practice systems that predate the rise of Western hegemony. Case in point are the Chinese, still identified through their surname or clan namefirst. Some cultures like Spain use the traditional naming order: given, last, then mother’s name (such that Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos would be written as Ferdinand Marcos Romualdez in the Hispanic style).

In the Philippines, the Spaniards replaced the Austronesian single name practice (Maganda, Malakas, Humamai, etc.) with two given names (Maria Ana, Jose Francisco, etc.) and later, with a given and last name. When the Americans took over, names also quickly changed for Filipinos. Married women, for one, became identified with their husband’s name, such that a Teodora Alonso de Mercado now became Mrs. Francisco Mercado, or simply Teodora Mercado without due recognition of her maiden name. One thing we continued was the usage of our mother’s maiden name as our “middle” name. So while the “J” in Donald J. Trump stands for John and not his mother’s maiden surname, almost all Filipinos use their mother’s maiden surname as a middle name. Think of Rodrigo Roa Duterte, Roa being his mother’s last name.

Although, in our history, and even until more recent times, some Filipinos did adopt the Americanized system. Manuel L. Quezon, for instance, used his second name Luis as his middle name. Benigno S. Aquino III used Simeon, his second name, and not Cojuangco, as his middle name. Among those who used the US-style of names, the Aquinos did it correctly. In Anglo-Saxon convention, a Junior, a III, or higher, always has the exact same first, middle, and last names as the one who bore the name before him. So, Benigno Simeon Aquino III was one of the very few correctly named “the thirds” because he, his father, and grandfather were all legally using Benigno Simeon. Many others, however, like current president Ferdinand Marcos Jr., are technically incorrectly named. Since Marcos Junior’s father was Ferdinand Emmanuel, while the son is just Ferdinand, his use of Junior is not really a faithful execution of the US style.

The ancients believed that our names influenced many aspects of our lives. Pre-Hispanic Filipinos were identified by the names of their children, such that the father and mother of a child named Malakas, for instance, would be called “Ama ni Malakas” or “Ina ni Malakas”. The ancient Egyptians believed that if you knew something’s or someone’s name, you had power over it. Norman G. Owens in one of his works studying the parish records of Tigaon in the Bikol Region identified a woman who was known by more than 10 names at various points in her life!

Alice Leal Guo sounds more Filipino, but every time she is called Guo Hua Ping, the possibility of her being a Chinese spy or a POGO criminal mastermind becomes more real. Names, truly, serve many purposes. While it gives us our identity, it also allows for people to see us based on their perceptions and the meaning of our name.

Do you know what your name stands for?