Saturday, January 21, 2006

What's in a name?

I will pay a million bucks to any of you if you can find another person in this planet with this name: GINO RUGGIERO LAPUEBLA CANLAS
That is MY name, and MY name alone. I will gladly recite it to anyone who is unfortunate enough to ask me what my name is. I'm absolutely fascinated with my name; I love it to bits.

Okay, I'll start with my last name. CANLAS. I have absolutely no idea what it means. All I know about it is that it is somewhat common in Southern Luzon and Pampanga in the Philippines. If anyone has more information on this surname, I would love to know about it...Doing my own personal research, I found that there used to be an old Irish clan named Canlas. The name isn't a Gaelic name, but it came to Ireland during the Anglo-Norman conquest of the British Isles during the Middle Ages. Canlas is a location surname, derived from Cauntelo in Northern France. The Norman name from which Canlas derives was originally de Cauntelo, which came from the Latin name, de Cantelupe. It can also be spelled Cantillon, Cantlin, Cantlowe, and Cantilupe. This is probably a long shot, but it would be really nice to know that I have French-speaking Norman ancestors.

Then there's my middle name: LAPUEBLA. For some reason, Filipinos have their mother's surnames as their middle name. Lapuebla is a very rare surname in the Philippines and everyone named Lapuebla is definitely related to my family (mom's side). La Puebla in Spanish means "town" in the feminine. It's got a very interesting story behind it...A few generations ago when the Philippines was still a Spanish Colony (sigh...) my maternal great-grandfather's family's last name was de la Cruz. Anyway, my mom's lolo got wanted by the Spanish and we changed our last name to Lapuebla. I was wondering if it would have been easier to stay obscure by staying de la Cruz, since half the Philippines has that name...but I'm alive, so obviously "Lapuebla" kept us safe.

RUGGIERO. Since Filipino parents don't have a choice of their child's middle name, they give their children two first names. Why they picked Ruggiero, I have no idea. It's an Italian version of the Old Germanic words hrod (famous) and ger (spear). In Teutonic mythology, Hrothgar was a great warrior, and in Old English, Hrodgar conquered Sicily and drove the Arabs out of it.

GINO. Another Italian name. My Italian professor did a double-take when he first did attendance and saw my name and then my face. Yep, my name has two Italian parts. Gino doesn't really have a specific meaning. Gino can mean "gracious gift of God" from the Hebrew name Yohannon. It can also mean "monstrous" in another language that I can't remember. But in Italian, Gino is just a nickname that you attach to names. For example, Georgio turns into Georgino and Luigi turns into Luigino, and for short you just call them Gino. At first I didn't like this because my name means nothing...but then I realized that I can attach my name to so many other names, meaning my name can mean almost anything I want it to mean. That's encouraging because it means that I control who I want to be and what I will become.