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By Pennie Azarcon-dela Cruz, Executive Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine THE man at the Immigration counter stared at his computer, scanned my passport and gave me the eye. Oh no, I thought, it’s happening again. I felt like this guy in the movie “Groundhog Day” who wakes up every day to repeat exactly what transpired the previous day. Déjà vu never felt as scary -- and as inevitable. I knew exactly what the problem was: my name, my unbelievably pedestrian, overwhelmingly common, disgustingly anonymous name. For all I know, I must have had at least a dozen namesakes on the Immigration bureau’s hold departure list that particular night and the BID agent was just being careful. Sigh. I probably share my last name with about 30 million Pinoys, 40 million if you count the two variant spellings of Dela (De La) Cruz. Out of curiosity, I once checked the phone directory to see how many Dela Cruzes there are, and was amazed at how prolific our common ancestors must have been. As sure as there’s a Filipino in every global disaster, there’s bound to be several Dela Cruzes in every barangay. Fortunately, we no longer have these medieval wars of attrition that saw legit heirs to the throne systemically decimated by their scheming enemies; can you imagine all those pretenders to the throne coming out of the woodwork and the endless wars of succession that we’d have to put up with? Technically speaking, I am not a Dela Cruz. But I married one, never imagining the drastic changes that this little act of commitment would rain on my life. The first time I applied to renew my passport under my married name, I had to line up for hours for my NBI clearance. No problem, I thought; after all, my biggest crime was probably entertaining impure thoughts, and they certainly don’t have police records on those. To my horror, the NBI clerk beckoned me to a window and gave me a long list of crimes and misdemeanors that would be enough to put me on the national police’s order of battle. What the…? I muttered, scanning the all-points bulletin that listed estafa, concubinage, illegal recruitment, adultery, fraud, grave scandal and other crimes attributed to this “Josefina Dela Cruz.” A one-woman crime wave, imagine that. Sounds petty now, but at that time and this was still the martial law era, I quaked in my boots at the thought that I could have been arrested, detained or “disappeared” while “resisting arrest” if I so much as protested that it was all a case of mistaken identity. My husband faces the same dilemma and undergoes the same dread at every Immigration counter. In fact, he has taken to bringing an affidavit to prove that he is not his namesake, who happens to be a felon in uniform. Believe it or not, my kids have started to hoard their share of identity crisis stories. The eldest for instance, was once summoned to the principal’s office and asked to bring her “delinquent” parents to school which, in this matriarchal country, often means the mother. We had been remiss in paying the tuition, the Registrar said with a self-righteous snort when I showed up looking very annoyed at the inconvenience. Did I know that the school could refuse to let our daughter take her quarterly exams unless we settled our overdue accounts? Looking even more pissed off, I fished out the official receipt from my bag and whipped it out with a flourish. And what do you call this? I countered, brandishing the OR that clearly indicated how we had paid the tuition in full. The Registrar peered at the receipt, examined the name, compared it with the list on the computer screen and immediately broke into a wheedling smile. It turns out my daughter had a namesake in the same grade. The very same name, added the woman, except for the middle initial. Unfortunately, the clerk must have been half-asleep and omitted that all-important letter, and that’s where all this confusion commenced.. This was exactly the scenario we had wanted to avoid when we decided to give our offspring two Christian names, and insisted that they use both in all their schoolwork. Well, didn’t work. We should have named the girl Iphegenia Clytemnestra Praxideles Dela Cruz, and our son Thermopylae Euclid Papanopoulous Dela Cruz. We’ve since used this ruse to keep the kids in line. Hey, we’d say when they proved particularly recalcitrant, the documents are all in and next month, they’re scheduling a court hearing on the name change. Want to come? No thanks to our parenting skills, we have two very well-behaved children on our hands. My grief with my name resurfaced anew last week, when we got a new artist in the office. The guy’s talented and shows up early at work, a real gem. But thanks to his name, I’ve had to deny fierce rumors that I’m building my very own dynasty in the Magazine. With the copy editor sharing the same name, we now have three J. Dela Cruzes in our small work team of seven. Hmm, let’s see: just where do you get these forms so you can file for a name change? Hey, I really want to know! Family values. Family feud. Family ties. Family curse. What’s the latest on the Filipino family? Check it out in the August 24 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.