Funny Pinoy Cultures. Part Dos.
This is the second part of my foreigner friend’s funny observation about Filipino cultures.
Friend: Hey janjan, why does Filipino have two names?
Me: What do you mean by that?
Friend: For example, your name, it’s janjan, same as dondon’s name.
Me: Oh, you mean we like to have repetitive names in our nicks.
Friend: Yes. What’s the deal with that?
Me: I really don’t know the reason (cause at that time I really don’t know the reason)
Friend: OK.
But now I think I have an incling on why we ‘love’ repetitive nicknames. See Filipino names are not that unique so we tend to repeat the name to differentiate a person from another one with the same name. John is different from JohnJohn which in turn is different from Johnnyboy. I am also betting that the reason we have repetitive names is that it just rolls out of our tongue or maybe the person we are calling are semi-deaf. For example, I called john’s attention but he is semi-deaf, so I have to say, ‘john, john listen to me’ so in a way your name becomes johnjohn. Well that is my reason. What do you think about it? Why do we ‘love’ having repetitive nicknames.
I also noticed is most of us shorten the name of the person we call into one syllable. Example: my friends name is Jeffrey, but I call him Jef.
or maybe im just lazy. hahaha
Comment by Careers in Davao — October 30, 2007 @ 7:38 pm
Uhmm… that’s the sign of laziness.. hehehe.. well maybe if we can give our kids really short names then that wouldn’t be lazy..
Comment by jan2x — October 31, 2007 @ 10:31 am
i think yung mga pinoy matigas ang ulo [hardheaded] hindi mo mapapalingon sa isang tawag ,same as when the phone is ringing they won’t answer the first ring .:)
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