My name is Cicero, what’s yours?

It had stunned me so much so that I leaned to have a closer look at the operator of the Greyhound bus bound for Atlantic City.

Still wiggling to get comfortable in their seats, my fellow passengers hardly seemed to notice that we would be driven to resort casinos by someone named after a Roman philosopher.

Did it even strike them that he didn’t rattle off “bus riding rules” like others would, but presented each as if from a lectern? And as he marched down the aisle, turning side to side to inspect and count us, he did so with a noble air.

Perhaps legends on how we breathe our spirit into our names could be true. Like a friend named after the formidable wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has lived up to her namesake impressively in North America with her own imprint sans a president. And an uncle named by my mother’s best friend who had been enamored of  Zorro, the masked bandit-Robin Hood, fortunately demurred from swashbuckling, but instead,  had taken Zorro’s persona as defender of the oppressed and a generous giver to those in need.

Yet, if it hasn’t happened among Filipinos, some mothers have since regretted, according to a new survey that Ruth Graham cites at Slate.com,  giving their children names as common as James, for one—even if  in history and a version of the Bible, the name has gained the title, “King.”  I’m aware of one name that, at one point, Able might have wished, his mother refused to write in his birth registration—“Scrabble,” so inanely given because family friends played the game on his birth; shortened, I would like to think, he has since been known for such quality in his jobs.

From our Catholic faith, as we do know, lies our belief in the sacredness of our names. A long revered and easy practice passed on to us has been to name a child after the patron saint or the many appellations of the Virgin Mary on the day of our birth, and such could be handed down to heir after heir in the Spanish/European tradition. Imagine then, how many versions of the Blessed Mother’s name and millions of saints you could meet, or maybe a handful of your friends aware or not, that when called, and they respond, a haloed being materializes by sound.

Of course, it’s mere fantasy that none has demonized his/her name. Nor does it take much for others to re-baptize us and denigrate even desecrate our name. For instance, an indiscretion could transform us into an adverb or adjective, and a monumental faux pas could send onlookers or recipients spinning a consonant or a vowel to vilify it.

Still, with extreme poverty, abuse of power, corruption in government, injustice rendering most Filipinos a life of suffering, yet still surviving—you wonder what sustains them—why wouldn’t there be millions of saints?  Also, do we even ponder the name, by which, we, Filipinos are ID-ed?

Felipe II (Philip II), yet a Crown Prince, at the time Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, I suppose as decreed by his parents, Carlos V and Isabella of Portugal, baptized the archipelago after him—soon King of Spain, Portugal, Naples and Sicily, and during his marriage to Queen Mary I jure uxoris King of England and Ireland—an empire where “the sun never sets,” with the inclusion of the Philippines and other island chains in the Pacific. What a legacy somehow often rendered meaningless, to my mind, that is. Maybe Ferdinand Magellan’s first naming, where he found land, “Las Islas de San Lazaro” after him, whom Jesus called forth from the dead, suits better how phoenix-like most Filipinos rise over and over from virtual death.

How comforting, indeed, to realize the power behind our names, definitely something Cicero must know. I must find him next time I board a Greyhound for Atlantic City.