Naming in Panama - The Mother of Invention


Naming in Panama - The Mother of Invention

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Written by Matt Landau

Sunday, September 14 2008

Naming in Panama

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Sounds and syllables in Panamanian names vary slightly from those which I learned in school, making it hard for locals to pronounce correctly my name. But through the process of learning Spanish, most notably in a foreign country, names just have a way of rolling of your tongue.

Somewhere before the age of ten, the principals of education in Princeton Township require public school teachers to integrate a second language into their lesson plan for youngsters. And while very few of us even knew that other languages existed at the time, it came off as a frustrating premise: that just as we were beginning to understand one language, we'd be required to drop it all and move on to something new.

Unlike several of my friends whose fathers had married young women from vacations in Cancun, the only language that was spoken at our dinner table was English. There was the occasional curse word that'd slip out of my mother's mouth and entertain us for the remainder of the evening, but for the most part meals back then were a monolingual affair.

My first Spanish class was held in a room on the second story of John Witherspoon Middle School, which had been decorated for our arrival with a number of Spanish-related ornaments and knick-knacks. It was as if our teacher, envious of the science lab or wood workshop, had outfitted the classroom with sombreros and dried chili ristras for ambiance, not that we'd actually be using any of them throughout the course of the day.

The first mission of a class that would eventually come to resemble a war zone was to designate Spanish names for me and my fellow estudiantes. It was a fun assignment in that many of us had previously considered changing our names so by making it such a welcomed opportunity, Spanish had made a good first impression on us all.

In assigning Spanish names, our teacher conducted an act that would resonate far longer than any other middle school tutorial. There were the easy kids like John and Michael and Susan who had pre-packaged names, with Spanish-speaking counterparts supposedly already living similar lives in another country, only theirs were to the soundtrack of mariachi.

"John, your new name will be Juan," our teacher said. "That's pronounced with an ‘H' like ‘Huan', OK? Huan do you understand that?" Simple translations like these were not nearly as interesting as the deep end of the Spanish name pool: the difficult kids like Kenny and Abigail and Dylan who's corresponding names didn't seem to have ever made it onto Spanish naming guides and who, because of this, were labeled more or less indeterminate souls.

"What about me? What name do I get?" I remember a friend asking, almost like her Spanish name was a lottery number, or a ticket determining when she'd get service in the supermarket to buy sliced meats.

"Kendra," our teacher pondered, as she tapped her pen against her lip. "You will be known as..." It was as if, by looking long and hard at this poster of a plate of tacos on the wall, the name came to her in a divine way. "Maria!" our teacher shouted out, a name that sounded eerily similar to Eureka. "You will be named Maria."

Where she had been granted the seemingly biblical right to rename each of her fourth period students none of us knew, but from the second we were assigned them, we knew these names were the start of something good.

Our Textbook, Dime

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"Hola Matteo," a friend might say in passing, or "Buenas dias amigo!" It was our way of showing the rest of school we didn't care for English anymore, preferring instead for a higher, spicier language that allowed us not only to gossip covertly but to order successfully at the local Mexican restaurants. We all carried around textbooks under our arms which, to the outsider, looked to be called another word for ten cents. To us learning Spanish though, we knew it meant much much more.

Up until this point I understood very little about Spanish, but upon joining the cult I was able to identify with our cleaning ladies who had always spoken the code behind my mothers back. My brother realized it was not just a language that Zorro spoke before he jumped on this horse and my father began to speak his own version of Spanish on occasion too, using various phrases he had picked up on the fishing docks and on television in lieu of the correct words needed to put together a cogent thought.

"Donde frijoles!" he would scream out from the sidelines of my brother's soccer games. And with the encouragement of his fellow Hispanic parents, he would twist it and turn it into new derived versions. "Mucho frijoles Simon, muy bueno!" No one knew what it meant or why he was saying it, but it delighted us all.

As I progressed through my first semester of Spanish, our dinner table got increasingly more bizarre as well. My mother, who learned Spanish back when the bob was in style, used my classes to reignite her interest in the language, encouraging me every night to discuss with her what I had learned that day, and to do so in Spanish. So while the conversations to us came off as sophisticated and scholarly, had someone like Cervantes been around he'd surely have done the Spanish equivalent of shitting his pants.

Chances are, people in Panama won't be able to pronounce your name. Granted, if it's a mainstream name like Miguel or Juan, you may not run into issues. But if you have a name like Keenan or Quintin or Marsalis or god forbid something Asian, prepare to be called a variety of names, none of which will really be correct. Adopting a new Spanish name can save a lot of time and energy, unless you have been donned one back somewhere in middle school like me, Matteo, in a naming progress I now look back on as akin to being reborn.