Names

I come from a country where the only names you can legally give your children are the ones that appear in Turkish names dictionary. This not only limits being creative while naming your kids, it also makes it impossible for millions of people to be named in their mother language. You can name your child “sold” (in Turkish of course) but you cannot use the letters x or w that exists in Kurdish, or anything that is not Turkish. Strange enough many Arabic names are fine as it is considered good to give Islamic names to your children.


I have been to many countries where people have interesting to strange names but so far no other country came close to Philippines in being liberal in choosing a culture for naming. Of course, because of the influence of Spanish colonizers and Catholic religion, the most common names are mostly Spanish, such as Maria or Juan. Then comes the American influence and names like Ronald and Grace. But it seems today’s Filipino families do not need any more influence to find names. For example, Maya’s cousins have the names from Greek, German, French and other cultures. They all have the same family name but their first names are like a world tour: Abigail, Fabienne, Athena, Odessa, Jamaica, Fraulein, Jefferson.


I really love this. Because of the fact that people learn to spell all sorts of names all the time, Philippines also became the first country where some people managed to spell my name correctly. Wikipedia says that if Malaysia didn’t get its independence first Philippines could be called Malaysia. It seems, once that name was taken they gave up about the search and kept the former colonizers name and there seems to be no change in that; it remains the only country in South East Asia with a western name. But they just like it better this way and that's perfectly fine as long as we learn how to spell it correctly (double p, single n, and with the the). At least they don't have a complex about their country having the same name with a very beautiful bird!