Incoming high school senior
Ratziel is enrolling this week at Urdaneta City National High School in
Pangasinan, northern Philippines, and he will have to write down his full name.
It consists of 40 first names—plus a surname. Incredible as it may seem, Ratziel,
15, was born Ratziel Timshel Ismail Zerubbabel Zabud Zimry Pike Blavatsky Philo
Judaeus Polidorus Isurenus Morya Nylghara Rakoczy Kuthumi Krishnamurti Ashram
Jerram Akasha Aum Ultimus Rufinorum Jancsi Janko Diamond Hu Ziv Zane Zeke
Wakeman Wye Muo Teletai Chohkmah Nesethrah Mercavah Nigel Seven Morningstar A.
San Juan CCCII.
Incoming high school senior Ratziel is enrolling this week at Urdaneta City
National High School in Pangasinan, northern Philippines, and he will have to
write down his full name. It consists of 40 first names—plus a surname.
Incredible as it may seem, Ratziel, 15, was born Ratziel Timshel Ismail
Zerubbabel Zabud Zimry Pike Blavatsky Philo Judaeus Polidorus Isurenus Morya
Nylghara Rakoczy Kuthumi Krishnamurti Ashram Jerram Akasha Aum Ultimus Rufinorum
Jancsi Janko Diamond Hu Ziv Zane Zeke Wakeman Wye Muo Teletai Chohkmah Nesethrah
Mercavah Nigel Seven Morningstar A. San Juan CCCII.
His older brother, 21-year-old Ramuel, is also enrolling at the University of
the Philippines (UP) Baguio as a sophomore. He has drawn attention, too, because
he has 20 first names.
Ramuel, a biology student, was named Ramuel Spirituel Mattathiah Obadiah Darius
Desiderius Abner Macaire Nowell Asa Izzy Zoon Politikon Trigg Gruffydd Keen Kemp
Knowles Bonifacio Makabayan A. San Juan.
Their oldest sister, Ramille Lewisse, 25, who operates a Web design consultancy
firm in Metro Manila, is not to be outdone. She has shaped a career with a few
people knowing she has 20 first names: Ramille Lewisse Marion To Kalon Zoe Vera
Natalia Nadezna Zora Hosea Pro Patria Berenice Clotilda Currente Calamo Naomi
Nahum Mehetabel A. San Juan.
The middle initial “A”—for Agustin—represents their mother’s surname.
The mental training needed to help each of the siblings get their names in the
right order and correctly spelled was provided by their mother, Raquel Agustin,
who is teaching high school mathematics in the United States.
Father is to ‘blame’
The kilometric names, however, were all their father’s “fault.”
Their father, Rufino Ramil San Juan V, a former Urdaneta councillor and student
activist and campus journalist at UP Baguio in the 1980s, decided that the
bureaucracy needed to learn a thing or two about flexibility.
“My first child was born, but I was not happy when people in charge of her
documents showed little imagination,” San Juan told the Inquirer by telephone
from Urdaneta. “The form had a very short empty line where I was expected to
fill out with my daughter’s name. I asked, ‘What if I decide to give my child a
longer name?’ and got the reply, ‘You can’t do that.’”
“So I decided that I could do just that,” he said.
“My wife did have reservations as any level-headed, geometrically centred
mathematics teacher would,” he said.