Wednesday, October 14, 2009

What's in a name?

The other day, I was teaching my son his middle name. He knows his given names (he has two) and his surname by heart, even knows how to spell his full name, so I thought he ought to know about his middle name. After all, that is my father's legacy to me.

So here's the scene. I just revealed his middle name to him. My son looks up to me with mild surprise:

MIGUEL: Mommy, why do I have so many names now?
MOMMY: Baby, that's your middle name.
MIGUEL: What's a middle name?
MOMMY: Your middle name was your Papa's (grandpa's) surname. That was my surname before Daddy and I were married. Now, I use Daddy's surname, and so do you.
MIGUEL: Why isn't it a misname? It's a misname.

This one left me scratching my head. My son has a penchant for coining terms, depending on how he understands the prefix and the suffix. His English is far from perfect but it is a confusing language, after all. My interpretation of "misname" was something like "misspelled", and so I prodded him further:

MOMMY: (confused) You mean it's wrong? No, my surname is correct.
MIGUEL: (exasperated at the stupid mom) NO! I said misname! It's not SIR-name, it should be MISS-name coz you're a girl!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

awwww...c'mon! (hands on hips)I can't believe you missed it! It should be miss-name because it used to be your name when you were still a miss, and not a missus. :-)

Or does it say enough about how my mind works? pang-3- year old ba ang utak ko, o pang 33-year old ang utak ni Miguel? which is which? hehehe.

But please tell Miguel that according to Ninang, he is right, and mommy was wrong. haha!

iluzionada said...

Well, since it's a hypothetical question, then I don't need to answer hahaha! :)