Dissecting Nicknames and its Present Relevance in the Filipino Context Joey Abindan Introduction Since the pre-hispanic era, nicknames have played a virtually important task in identifying a particular person in a community. Although, it has never been oftentimes a standardized process, it happens organically when attribution of representations has been made and its relationship to the context of a language appellation. This practice, despite its modern analytical obscurity, remains deeply embedded into the Filipino culture, ever dynamic with the mutable zeitgeist itself. This stands true as it is often rare for a Filipino not to have at least several nicknames in one’s lifetime, or even with how the attribution of nicknames have changed throughout the course of history as contexts violently change. One example of this is how Jose Rizal was nicknamed “Pepe”, a contraction from two latin words on a religious context after his name counterpart, and had for once stood as rather endearing; but time had viciously skewed its context- now, it is a tagalog euphemistic slang that refers to the female genitalia often called out in a playful manner among peers. Well, now imagine what horror would Rizal live through his younger days if he lived in the present times. In fact, Filipino nicknames have quite the notorious reputation with other nationalities as well. Nicknames such as Boy and Girly, or popular political nicknames such as Digong, Joker Aroyo, Jingo, P-Noy, Bong Bong and a library of ridiculous sounding tags if one is foreign to the context had baffled foreigners even now (Harvey, 2016; Mendoza, 2021). This insight only corroborates the fact that nicknames are of experience as well. Without the experience of its context then one will always remain foreign to it despite explanations. Nicknames are quite an important aspect of identity in the Philippines, dominated by the fact that politicians are usually known by their nicknames and not by their real names; that even such phenomenon had made itself into the headline of a foreign online newspaper when one past