What’s in a name?

Ly Phu Cuong of If..Else has been doing a bit of study on names of late and inspired this diatribe. You can blame him if you get bored to tears reading about my name.

Christopher

My full name is Christopher Roland Cabanillas. Christopher, of course, is name for the downgraded saint that supposedly carried the Christ. It’s a greek name that basically means Christ bearer. How’s that for pressure? I’m not Greek though. I’m Catholic but the Catholic Church no longer recognizes Christopher as a Saint though many individual churches still do. The priest made a comment on this when I was baptized not long after Saint Christopher was removed from the rolls of saintdom.

Roland

Roland was my maternal grandfather’s first name. His full name was Roland Peter Perly Kane. He was of Irish descent. However, Roland is actually a French name. The most famous mention being the paladin of Charlemagne around 778 C.E.

Cabanillas

My last name, Cabanillas, is actually much shorter now than it used to be. My father can rattle off the whole thing and it is something of a tongue twister. The best I can manage to remember is “Cabanillas de Valle”. I believe that means “Cabanillas of the Valley.” Someone that can actually speak my ancestral tongue of Spanish feel free to correct me. I could be horribly wrong about a great deal of this. The Spanish side of my family is something of a mystery. According to Wikipedia Cabanillas is a town in the norther province of Navarre, Spain. Cabanillas is, from what I understand, a rather popular name in Puerto Rico. However, in the U.S. Military there have only ever been a few Cabanillas.

One of those was Pedro Juan Cabanillas, last seen making the sign of the cross before abandoning ship during World War II in the Pacific.

Despite the long Spanish heritage I am made to understand that Cabanillas may actually have origins in southern France a very, very long time ago. Feel free to spend the money doing the research on that one and get back to me.

Originally this was part of a much longer comment I was in the midst of writing on Phu’s… Cuong’s.. whoever’s site when I realized my comment was getting longer than his already lengthy but, entertaining post. You can read his article and the follow-on comments at: A brief history of names