THE NAME GAME 1

In the mad rush to Christmas and the end of 2007, let’s take a holiday from business, numbers, and accounting.

How do you account for the names parents give their children?

http://www.taxgirl.com/thank-god-its-friday/ got me to dig up an email I received a few months back on the funny / weird name games Filipinos play.

A RHOSE, BY ANY OTHER NAME
by Matthew Sutherland

“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 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 nameslike Babes, Lovely,
Precious, Peachy or Apples. Yuk, ech ech. Here, however, no one
bats an eyelid.

More in the next post . . . . . . . .