What's In A Name?

My birth name is Louella. Bellewitch is only a pseudonym I use in campus journalism. My other pseudos are Storme, Luningning, Phoenix, Lyka Balm Paxe and Eyewall.

Have you ever wondered what your name would have been if it wasn't what it is now? I did. Well, when my mom got pregnant with me, she immediately decided to name me Jennifer. My dad had a different name in mind. He wanted to name me after his mom, Benigna. But my sister, Merce wouldn't let my dad name me Benigna so she gave my dad a newspaper to search for a suitable name for me. My dad read an article about this famous journalist named Louella Parsons so he named me after her. Isn't it coincidental that I became a journalist like her? Huh!

Although, I only had 3 syllables in my name, I get a lot of nicknames from my family, friends, foes, and acquaintance. Generally, my nickname is Ella.

However, my mom and sisters call me Langga or Palang (short for palangga), meaning, 'beloved'. Maybe because I'm the youngest and a dear to all! My dad calls me Maru (short for marunong) 'cause he claims I'm a genius because I started learning really young. At age 3, I could already count, read and write. At age 5, I already enrolled myself for grade one, solved simple math problems and wrote cursive using a ballpen! My only brother gave me the name, Belle (french for beauty) because he says I'm beautiful inside out.

My childhood friends simply call me Lang, maybe a shortened form of Langga or Elang, another version of Ella.

During high school, my short nickname, Ella was really helpful in making me win in school politics. It's short, it's catchy but maybe I had the impressive platform and speech that's why I won. My closest friends called me "Weng", "Wel" or "We" from the middle syllable of my full name.

When I was in college at UST, my UNO Iskolar-mates baptized me with a new nickname, Lulu. It's modern, yes it's true. But I wasn't very comfortable using it so it didn't last long. Some of my classmates at UST called me "Pops" from my last name.

When I moved to WMSU, I was back to Ella at first. Then, I joined a friendship group of four. We were notorious and really nasty, we called ourselves BOO! Actually, the name came from our blood types but it connotes scaring other people and we love the attention. We decided to call ourselves scary names as well: Rose was Freak, Liza was Creep, Edel was Spook and I, Witch. They also had their nicknames spelled backwards: Esor, Azil, Lede. It was difficult for me to decide which nickname I should read backwards: Ella (Alle), Lulu (Ulul--imagine?), so on... Then I met this girl named Athika who loves to call me Louie. When I read Louie backwards, it sounded unique! Eiuol (read eyewall) became a hit pseudo for me as well.

My bf for 8 years used to call me Mahal; sometimes, Langga; and at one point, Isda (when I was calling him Bingwit). Such cute teenybopper terms of endearment...