Sunday, March 27, 2011

From BBC News: Playful Filipino names

This article reminds me of when we were living in Jakarta and our driver assured me there were some communities in Sumatra where they named their children after the first thing they saw. So there were people with names like Meja (table), Honda (after the bike), Bangku (bench)... I thought he was kidding me but he insisted, "Betul madam!"

I think the best one came from Dear Hubby's office. There was some guy there called Badass Charles Bronson or something similarly outrageous. He's Indonesian. And yes, it's his REAL name. I don't think anyone had the guts to ask him why his name was like that.. everyone knows you don't mess with Charles Bronson.




5 comments:

  1. LOL..I can think of some people here who picked pretty funny names for themselves - Rain, Money, Pretty, Fancl (pronounced fan-curl, after the brand!), Lolli...

    Actually, I'm waiting to meet people called Tomato, Pomelo, Watermelon or Grape! :D

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  2. ??? Lolli? What a name. A girl I knew in Uni called herself Oily. I didn't know why. "So er.. why... because your face so oily izzit?"

    Fancl??? Now I've heard it all.

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  3. haha:) funny! Thank you for the interesting read.

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  4. Hahaha! I just had to laugh (I'm Filipino) because you haven't heard the worst yet. The names in Bisaya are known to be even worse (I've relatives nicknamed Bobo, Dodo, Dayday, etc.) And the Chinoys (chinese filipinos) are super funny. Brothers called Rolls and Royce, Donald Dang, Mickey Mao, Michael Jacks Ong, cricky and moskie (short for cricket and mosquito). Oh and I had a classmate whose real first name was Brookshields. Wahahahaha!

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  5. De Vine: I loved the article too, thought it was so funny!

    thediplomaticwife: Mickey Mao???? LOL


    Oh, btw... the guy in the office was from another company, not from Dear Hubby's office. And his name was Sad Charles Bronson... not Badass. My bad. I guess finding out Charles Bronson was part of his real name screwed my memory up!

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