Alvin (my younger brother) just uploaded his first round of pictures from the Philippines to Flickr, and I spotted this one right away:
— from DJ Moka
Edwin Bugnay is my paternal grandfather who died before I was born. Yes, Edwin is actually my grandfather’s first name, and Bugnay is my father’s family name. My dad and some siblings took the name Edwin, the rest kept Bugnay. Yes, it’s rather confusing, but so is the Spanish naming convention and the Spaniards ruled the Philippines for more than 400 years. We can attribute any cultural confusion to them. The Philippine islands are named after Spain’s King Philip II, which I learnt while travelling because many people asked me about it.
There’s a bit of cruel irony in the fact that the Filipino accent cannot pronounce the “f” sound and instead turns it into a “p” and “Filipino” is spelled with an “f” and not a “Ph” like people expect, from the name. As if it isn’t confusing enough! My geography professor at SFU told everyone the Philippines is consistently the most misspelled of any country.
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