Asians, Bad Ideas, Bar Exams, Ridiculousness

Can You Believe These Folks Passed The Bar Exam?

What kind of parents would give their children such ridiculous names?

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It’s fun to look at lists of bar exam passers. You can celebrate the success of your friends and derive schadenfreude from the failure of your enemies. And you can marvel or laugh at the names that some people have been saddled with by their parents.

We recently learned about two bar passers with such wacky names, it’s a miracle they survived the playground — then graduated from college and law school, and passed a very tough bar exam….

This news comes from my ancestral homeland of the Philippines. We learned about it via Rappler (one of the country’s best websites for news and commentary):

At noon Tuesday, March 18, upon the announcement of the Supreme Court (SC) of the results of the 2013 Bar Examinations, social media was abuzz over two names in the list of passers.

Habeas Corpuz, 35, and Nat King Coles, 34, were the subject of celebratory remarks online mainly due to their unique names.

Corpuz is named after a court order that requires appearance of a person under arrest before a court; Coles, after an American singer.

Yes, Habeas Corpuz got mocked as a kid, as he tells Rappler. But hey, things could have been worse — at least he wasn’t named Adolf Hitler.

A bit of cultural context: bizarre names are a thing in the Philippines. See, e.g., the Pascual family (who have given their kids such names as Macaroni, Spaghetti, Sincerely Yours, and Cheese Pimiento).

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As noted by the Wall Street Journal (and as I know from my many relatives who are lawyers in the Philippines), the bar exam over there is notoriously difficult, with a passage rate this time around of about 22 percent — the lowest recorded since 2000. So congratulations to Habeas Corpuz, Nat King Coles, and all of the other bar passers, no matter what you’re named!

Bar passers Habeas Corpuz, Nat King Coles both instructors [Rappler]
Habeas Corpuz Passes Key Test in the Philippines [Southeast Asia Real Time / Wall Street Journal]

Earlier: New Jersey Court Rules Against the Parents of Adolf Hitler

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