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Some parents in New Zealand have apparently forgotten about it.  The revelation came after nine-year-old Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii asked for her name to be changed for fear of being bullied.  To her friends, she’s otherwise only known as “K”.  Other names found among children in New Zealand are Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence and Benson and Hedges (twins).


http://ayulittleone.blogsome.com/2008/07/28/bizarre-names-banned-in-new-zealand/

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a foreigner's perspective---


A Rhose, by Any Other Name

By Matthew Sutherland
11 August 2009

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches” –(Proverbs 22:1)

WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the first cultural differences to strike me was names.  The subject has provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since.

The first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone here has a nickname.  In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I am glad to say, to lose them.

The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as overbearingly cutesy for anyone over about five.  “Fifty-five-year-olds with names that sound like five-year-olds”, as one colleague put it.  Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never make it to adulthood.  So, probably, would girls with names like Babes, Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples.  Yuk, ech ech.  Here, however, no one bats an eyelid.

Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call “doorbell names”.  These are nicknames that sound like – well, doorbells.  There are millions of them.  Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common.  They can be, and frequently are, used in even more doorbell-like combinations such as Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on.  Even our newly-appointed chief of police has a doorbell name – Ping.  None of these doorbell names exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my untutored foreign ear.  Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was called Bing, replied, “because my brother is called Bong”.  Faultless logic.  Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come from “dong” is a slang word for… well, perhaps “talong” is the best Tagalog equivalent.


http://www.kwelangpinoy.com/funny-pinoy-names/

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And how could I forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomly-inserted letter ‘h’.  Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have not yet figured out, but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an otherwise only averagely weird name.  It results in creations like Jhun, Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy.  Or how about Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)?

There is also a whole separate field of name games — those where the parents have exhibited a creative sense of humor on purpose.  I once had my house in London painted by a Czechoslovakian decorator by the name of Peter Peter.  I could never figure out if his parents had a fantastic sense of humor or no imagination at all — it had to be one or the other.  But here in the Philippines, wonderful imagination and humor is often applied to the naming process, particularly, it seems, in the Chinese community.  My favourites include Bach Johann Sebastian; Edgar Allan Pe; Jonathan Livingston Sy; Magic Chiongson, Chica Go, and my girlfriend’s very own sister, Van Go.  I am assured these are real people, although I’ve only met two of them.  I hope they don’t mind being mentioned here.

How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with names like John Smith.  How wonderful to come from a country where imagination and exoticism rule the world of names.  Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelievably named town of Sexmoan (ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles).

Where else in the world could that really be true?  Where else in the world could the head of the Church really be called Cardinal Sin?  Where else in the world could Angel, Gigi and Mandy be grown-up men?  Where else could you go through adult life unembarrassed and unassailed with a name like Mosquito, or Pepper, or Honey Boy?

Where else but the Philippines!


http://www.kwelangpinoy.com/funny-pinoy-names/

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gidala sa simbahan ni hubag iyang pinanggang iro nga si botoy kay iyang pabunyagan.

hubag:  'dre, magpa-special unta kog pabunyag ni botoy.
fr lorenzo:  naunsa ka?  anginon pa nimo ang simbahan anang imong iro?
hubag:  aw, nangita man lang god unta kog paagi nga ma-donate sa maayong kawsa ning akong singko mil...
fr lorenzo:  na hala, dali; ikaw gyod, wa man ka magsulti dayon nga katoliko diay nag kaliwat si botoy.

 

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