"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet."

--From Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Hey,

As you can see the blog has gone through some changes namely a new music video, modified header and a gazillion links! Well, not that many but enough and I will certainly continue to add more though once I recall other people's sites. I always thought that a 3-column skin will be better but I still like the looks of this skin. Guess a change that major will have to wait until I really really get bored of this one. Back to the main story....

Where did your name come from? How is it pronounced? What are the different ways that people call you (i.e. nicknames)?

So I shall now talk a little bit about mine. My full name is Azizul Nur bin Abdul Aziz Al-Akbar. A bit of a mouthful ain’t it? I can still imagine the faces of those here who first heard my name. Bewildered, disbelief, shocked, tak faham....you name it, I've seen it. One friend even thought that I would look like all those Middle Eastern people (a more polite way of saying he thought I would look like a terrorist) when he first saw my name in the register. Another said that it makes the names of individuals here seem boring! Well, my brother and sister have even longer names okay, so there.

A lot of people here cannot pronounce Azizul the way we Malaysians do. They will be okay when you say, “A-zee-zul”, emphasising the middle syllable. They are used to saying Muslim names a certain way and the fact that my name has 3 syllables may be too challenging for their tongues, hahaha. Ye la, when they are so used to names like Mike, Matt, Sarah, Liz etc.

When writing my name in a shortened version I like to make it Azizul Aziz. Kind of have a nice ring to it. I’m not too sure though of the meaning of my name. If Azizul is just another version of Aziz then my name might mean, “He who is enlightened and powerful”, since Aziz means "powerful" and Nur means "light". Anybody care to shed some light (no pun intended) on this matter, please do. I asked my parents how they cooked up my name but they said they just thought of it, thought it was nice and so named me. I once thought that it was a combination of my dad’s and his dad’s names or my dad’s and my mother’s names (Abdul Aziz + Mohamed Noor = Azizul Nur or Abdul Aziz + Noraini = Azizul Nur) but no. Haih, bosan. Well, better than having my name as Nur Azizul which I do get teased about. My paternal grandfather even wanted to name me Anwar! I prefer mine though.

Over the years of meeting people and making friends, nicknames were coined to either simplify how people pronounce my name, to show that we are a tight bunch or just for something that I remind them of. However, most people just call me Azizul anyways. Here is a list of what I have heard myself being called by my friends so far in no particular order along with some background information on them.

- Zul, Zizul, Ziz (this is my name chopped up into pieces)
- Aziz (like those above but this is actually my father’s name which I don’t mind being called)
- Zizi (Asyraf Bux and Ryan Lee Baskaran used to call me this when they were much much younger)
- Jijul, Jijoi (different pronunciations of Zizul, a more comel way I guess)
- Guji, Guj (the Japanese name of Godzilla, Gojira, shortened. This happened when we had a Kadet Remaja Sekolah camping trip in high school. The name spread in college courtesy of my ‘sheep’-friend, Mai)
- Dino (as in dinosaur. My friend here Bilal made this up saying it was due to my size)
- Cutey pie (my grandaunt called me this when I was a toddler and still tend to)
- DarkL|ghT (my pseudo-name which I chose after a character in Star Wars. Adi calls me this in real life!)
- Abang/Abang Zul (what my siblings call me of course)
- Azi (the newest nick by Hadri. People in college never called me this since we had a senior called Azie. Feels....weird)

Another fact before I sign off. My family has 5 children in it including me. My mom’s cousin has 7 children (and maybe still counting, I can't remember). Both of their husband’s main first names are Aziz. All of their children has their main first name starting with ‘Az-‘...cool! I think this is a cool tradition to start/continue but will there be enough names? Till next time.


Your friend,
DarkL|ghT