What's in a name?

The adventures of being Leland (Part I)

STILL WATERS

Reflections of an Ex-Future Messiah

In my father's house, there are many rooms.

It was probably my father's decision to name me Leland after his alma mater. Like all of us, I've had to live with the name given to me and while I love being Leland, an unorthodox name like mine has its share of problems.

First of, people aren't sure if Leland is a girl's name or a guy's name. I recently confirmed by e-mail my child's attendance to a Halloween party and the person at the other end replied "Noted, Ma'am". (And that, my friends, is why I use the Joseph in my name more often nowadays) It doesn't help that I have a tendency to sound like a girl over the phone, but that's another story.

Secondly, people tend to mispronounce the name. The proper way to pronounce my name is LEE-lùnd with an emphasis on the lee and with the lùnd rhyming with rotund (which I am not) or sounding like the "u" in understand. My former dean, who speaks English with a French accent, pronounces my name as LAY-lùnd. When he's in a very Frenchie mood, as he is once in a while, he pronounces it as Lay- LÙND (which I must admit sounds more regal). At least he got the lùnd right. A former professor, to this day, calls me LÉ-lùnd as if he were saying leleng.

Finally, Leland is such a foreign name literally and figuratively speaking. (I think Leland is originally an English name which literally means meadowland i.e. lee land) I only know one Leland personally (Leland Fong, my brother-in-law's friend) and I used to see the name Dr. Leland Villadolid at Makati Med everytime we visited our child's pediatrician.

That is why I always have difficulty when people ask for my name over the phone. When ordering out from Tapa King or Red Ribbon, I prefer to spare myself a lot of trouble and just say I'm Mr. Dela Cruz. Otherwise, I get receipts with all sorts of perversions on my name (ex. Liland, Lilano or coupled with my voice, Leilan). I always feel uncomfortable with the very Western practice at Starbucks where you have to give your name to the barrista and they announce your name to the world. I don't think Mr. Dela Cruz is appropriate in those situations so I usually end up saying my name is Joseph (which it is). I told my wife recently, that maybe I should be more adventurous and say my name is Tutunkhamen or Nebecchenezer or Melchizedek.

In my line of work, I deal a lot with poverty groups and for these groups, a  foreign name like Leland just doesn't work. I went to an urban poor community every Sunday when I was in college and when I was asked what my name was, I'd say, "Land ho" or "Land po" [Land (pronounced as land as in lupa) being the nickname my family gave me. That has it's own problems]. The people at Trese would say, "Ahhhhh! Lando"; to which I would say, "Hindi po, Land po"; to which they would reply "Kaya nga, Lando". To this day, in that part of the world, I am still Lando.