I used to hate having such a difficult last name to pronounce, from gawkily laughing along as my high school vice principal failed to even attempt to say my last name on the graduation stage, to grimacing every time I saw the only red squiggly line under my last name on an electronic assignment in elementary school. Only recently have I really appreciated the fact that Decolongon autocorrects to decolonize, a word that didn’t really mean anything to me while growing up, but one that’s become part of a personal manifesto. I still don’t know exactly where the name comes from, but I like this as a start.

Along with many other Filipino name clichés, my middle name is my mom’s maiden name, and despite the fact that I don’t exactly know where it comes from either, theories of its origins seem slightly easier to theorize: Canaria might denote origins from Spain’s Canary Islands, it could derive from the Filipino word kanaryo which describes a lighter shade of yellow, or it could simply be a less common Spanish-inflected surname from the history of Spanish conquest – or perhaps a combination of these.… read more