We were late in tuning in to the opening ceremony last week of the Rio Olympics, and by that time the alphabetical order of the parade of Nations was already somewhere in the letter L, so we thought we were still fortunate as the letter P was still way off and we still will be able to see the Philippine team. To our disbelief, even after waiting until the end of the parade, there was no Philippine team.
I told my wife the new Philippine president might have also “eliminated” even the Philippine Olympic officials for corruption.
Checking the internet the next day I found out that we totally missed the Philippine presence cause they marched under the label “Filipinas”.
What the…? was my complete reaction. All the years that I can remember watching every Olympics, our country went under the name Philippines. The letter P, yes P, starts the name of our country, not F. Whoever thought of changing that must totally be an ignoramus – so I told everyone.
Later on I found out that the Brazilians (oops sorry – the Brasilians) were the ones who decided to use Filipinas. Funny, I thought we only used Filipinas to refer to women of the Philippines. Anyways, I’m very convinced that the Brasilians themselves wouldn’t have known about the Filipinas name unless it came from one of the Pilipinos (oops sorry Filipinos) themselves. And whoever that Pinoy (oops I mean Finoy) is must totally be a nut job himself.
And so I started researching and found an essay in the internet that suggests the use of Filipinas is also correct. I also heard that there are several nationalistic nutjobs back home who are proponents to changing the name of the country to Filipinas.
We all know from history that our country was named from King Philip of Spain, not King Filip, hence Philippines. What blows me away is that our own alphabet does not have an F so why on earth do we use Filipinas? And very obviously we are an F and V-challenged people that even if we change it to Filipinas we will still pronounce it as Pilipinas.
So blame it on the Brasilians. You see, they call their Olympic committee as the Comitê Olímpico do Brasil, which is just about right since that’s exactly how they use their language. But back home we still insist on calling ours the Philippine Olympic Committee. Maybe its time to change it as well, to something like Komite Olimfiko ng Filipinas. Or while we’re at it, let’s also add F to our alphabet. Tama’ng tama sa kafe at fan-de-sal.
Now do you get the foint?