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Voltaire, Miro, sa collègue et moi avons pris un café dimanche matin dans un sympathique café parisien, dommage que tu n'étais pas là pour discuter dans la langue de Molière, Racine et... Voltaire avec nous!

These French words were from an email message I got last year from my friend Romain- I had mentioned to him during a chat that it was difficult growing up with a French name in a country full of Spanish and American ones, but that I had "grown into" its Versailles-like grandiloquence. When I first read them, I thought they formed the most beautifully constructed sentence (probably because I wasn't sure of what they meant!):

Voltaire, Miro, his colleague and I had coffee Sunday morning in a nice Parisian cafe, too bad you weren't there to converse in the language of Molière, Racine and... Voltaire with us!

The second Voltaire he refers to is the nom de plume of a philosopher of the French Enlightenment, François-Marie Arouet- a high school security guard once surprised me by calling him "the great agnostic." Was this evidence of the famous French wit?

Anyway, let me introduce you to the person who gave me my name and unwittingly tied my fate to that of France. He is my tatay or father Jaime, a historian and a professor: he looks so young in the picture above, it's a wonder how he raised the fireball he held in his hands.

My aunt Melia, Tatay's elder sister, twice told me that it was very quiet in the Quezon City hospital where I was born, only two days before President Marcos declared Martial Law. She and my Mom called me "Sonny Boy" and deferred giving the nurse a first name for my birth certificate until Tatay showed up: he was in hiding like many intellectuals during those days of disquiet. Hence, in my birth certificate, only my first name "Voltaire" is handwritten, proof that it was only added later on. (Actually, I have a second name... The generic Sonny Boy also stuck as a nickname: it is what members of my extended family and our friends call me up to now.)

I believe that a lot of parents unconsciously make their children, for good or ill, repositories of their dreams and our names can give us clues of what these are.

During the ISM Scholars' interview after 5th Grade, an interviewer Mrs. Cheng asked me if I knew after whom I was named. I had looked it up in Tatay's Encyclopedia Brittanica: I said I was named after a famous French philosopher. When I got home and proudly told my parents about my answer, they laughed and said, no, I was named after another Voltaire: Enrique Voltaire Garcia III, a former Editor of the Collegian, who was also an international debater, student council chairperson, and martyr during Martial Law.

Later, my friends Tricia baptized me "Rev" and Peter called me "Voltz" (with a "z") and they seemed better suited to me at certain stages: I liked them and sometimes still use them. After I myself became a Collegian Editor and a writer, however, I felt comfortable wielding the power of a name I share with two heroes- one of 18th century France, the other of 20th century Philippines- and I now use its cultural and historical narratives to enhance my life and those of the people around me.

. . .

In our walking tour yesterday, Carlos mentioned that "Lupang Hinirang," the Philippine national anthem- born of the first nationalist revolution in Asia- took inspiration from and is an "upside-down" or mirror version of "La Marseillaise," the rallying call of the revolution in France and now its national anthem. Listen for yourselves: "LH" is here and "LM" is here.