The Hall of Fame Series

Yes, you can be a lawyer (or doctor) with a name like that.

Here, I focus on the names of those who passed the Philippine bar and physician licensure exams in previous years. The bar passers' lists, in particular, are absolute gold for interesting names, which should give pause to the common objection that certain names are unprofessional and will sentence a child to a lifetime of not being taken seriously. Then again, our norms are different, so that pause can be as brief as you like.

The major difference between this and the Congratulations Series is that these samples skew older, thanks to law and medicine being postgraduate courses. Moreover, many graduates do not take the exam immediately, instead preferring to work first. In one year alone, there were at least two cases where a father and his daughter took and passed the same bar exam. Given the mix of older and younger generations in the same year, and the difficulty of separating so many examinees by age group, these lists are less useful for pinning down generational name trends. That said, it is also possible that the parents of future doctors and lawyers may be more conservative in their naming tastes. Any attempts to (dis)prove this would be more than welcome.

The series

• Jearemmy and Unalee are Lawyers Now: Names from the 2010 Bar Examinations
• Z19 and Cyd Charisse are Lawyers Now: Names from the 2006 Bar Examinations
• Filipino and Filipina are Lawyers Now: Names from the 2003 Bar Examinations
• Grainoil and Shalimar are Lawyers Now: Names from the 1999 Bar Examinations
• Edinburgh and Tettywangsa are Lawyers Now: Names from the 1998 Bar Examinations