Memoirs of an Amnesiac

It gets to be annoying each time.

I had one co-teacher, who, even when it is already in the middle of the school year, still forgets a student's name (even when she only had 4 classes with 20 students each class to handle). In order to hide her somewhat intolerable lack of awareness, she calls students as "Miss U" and "Mister U" until all of them have the same name (to the chagrin of those whose names have been forgotten).

Truly, what is there is a person's name?

I remembered my father told me he would have wanted to name me "Gwendolyn." I like the name since it's longer and it leaves an after-gliding effect on one's tongue once the "le" sound is produced. I told him about me liking the should-be name but then he said it was the priest who actually gave him an idea to make it shorter. The advantage of which is that come board examinations I wouldn't have to worry about misspellings and there wouldn't be so much circles to shade (You know what I mean.). The priest further on told him that my name meant that I "came from a white meadow." In my young heart, it sounded really cool.

The Latin word nomen actually meant "name." You can find that as root word to nomenclature, nominative, and others. When you separate the syllables no-men, when translated, no men, meaning no people or unnamed? (Just my curious thought.)

Some parents before used to name their children according to the name of the saints and mind you, they have been very generous. There are those named Juan Carlos Daniel or Gabriel Luis Eric as if they'd never run out of names to give. They probably have learned their own lessons. I had a student who had three names and he can't fit them in the boxes when he took the NAT and NCAE. He was having a difficulty writing them, much more pronouncing them (because they are truly a mouthful). I've also known of people whose names are just two letters like Jr and Gg (looks like a unit of measurement, right?), to name a few.

Names have given us identity. Before Coco just meant the one used for a variety of ways, one of which is in virgin coconut oils. Now, it meant that cute debonair of Kapamilya primetime TV. Names set us apart from others (especially when attached to our surnames). It causes us confusion, too, as when you remember one person's face yet his name sticks on top of your tongue. You'd wish there was a scanner just so the name could be read. Names give us memories of people we must treasure in our hearts and those we must learn to let go.

At other times, names could be annoying, especially when misspelled. Oh, the trouble one has to go through just so all his documents would coincide with his birth certificate! (NSO, it's time to earn again, heheh!) Good thing that we can already get a joint affidavit in the city hall (well, just beside it actually), stating that the person bearing the name in one document is the same person in the birth certificate (Now, this is double promotion, NSO!).

Oh names, names! What's in a name?