Pepe?

As a youngster, my Spanish speaking family members called me Pepe (pronounced peh peh), except for one Grand Aunt who called me Oscarito (little Oscar) because my father’s name was Oscar. Oddly, Oscar is my father’s middle name, but let us not stray too far from the issue at hand.

I’ve always found the nickname odd, and it really doesn’t translate well to English. Pepe, when spoken in English, ends up sounding like Peh Pay, and I only knew of one Peh Pay and he was a cartoon sexual predator skunk.

Fortunately, growing up in suburban New Jersey and then Long Island, no one called me anything but my actual name. I even had one Little League coach who called me Joey, which I was okay with.

However, some of my family members are Facebook friends of mine, and will still type out Pepe in comments on my posts. As a mature Man About Town, it doesn’t bother me, but my inquisitive nature still cries out for a rational explanation for how Pepe can be a nickname for someone named Joseph. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

I asked my mother how it came about that people called me Pepe, and her only response was that it was common for people named Jose to be called Pepe. This is not very satisfying, even though Jose is used for Joseph in Spanish, how does one get to Pepe from that?

I found some examples of nicknames originating from Spanish names that evolved from the sounds at the end of the name. For example, Enrique might be called Quiqe (proncouned Key Keh), emanating from the “que” at the end of Enrique. Pipe might form from Filipe, Memo from Guillermo or Diego from Santiago, although that one’s still a stretch in my book. But Pepe from Jose?

Jose Rizal, whose full name is the mouthful Jose Protasio Rizai Mercado y Alonso Realonda, was a Filipino nationalist in the late 1800’s who was executed by the Spanish government for his writings in favor of a free Philippines, which was ultimately seen as a spark for the Philippine Revolution. His nickname, was Pepe.

In a book about the revolutionary, author Felice Prudente Santa Maria explains the origins of this odd nickname thusly:

Jose’s mother was a devotee of Saint Joseph, the commonly accepted father of Jesus Christ. In Latin, Joseph’s name is followed by the letters p.p. for “pater putativus” which means putative father, or the generally supposed or reputed father of an illegitimate son. Since Joseph was not really Jesus’ father (God was), it was common to add the p.p. in reference to him. In Spanish, the letter ‘p’ is pronounced “peh.” Two ‘p’s would be “peh peh.”

So by this convoluted method, Jose Rizal came to be called Pepe by his family when he was a child, and the nickname stuck. Even knowing this, it still doesn’t get me all the way home. Rizal was a Filipino. My paternal lineage is Spanish, and both my parents are Cuban. We’ve got some ground to cover.

Through a second line of inquiry I discovered that the Real Acadamia Espanola claims the following origin:

[The] nickname Pepe comes, in reality, from the Italian Beppe, itself a nickname for Giuseppe.

This makes a bit more sense, does it not? It follows the previous guidance for nicknames generating from the phonetic sounds at the end of one’s name. Pepe for Giuseppe would fit that mold, which would satisfy me… if I was Italian! Sure, Giuseppe is Italian for Joseph, but my family is not Italian.

A third line of inquiry appears to satisfactorily solve the riddle. The old form of Jose, which is the Spanish version of Joseph, was Josepe (pronounced Ho seh peh). Following what now seems more and more likely the origin of most of these nicknames, the “peh” at the end of Josepe became Pepe, and while Josepe fell out of favor, with Jose replacing it, Pepe hung on like the distinct odor of Pepe la Pue. Josepe has Basque origins, and as I mentioned, my paternal lineage cries back to the Spanish coast for over 10,000 years (thank you Geneographic Project).

So the mystery is finally solved. I am Pepe.