'apl.de.ap'

'The Black Eyed Peas' is actually a pretty good name for a hip-hop group. It's also, I guess, a good name for a whatever-they-are-now group. I'm not a fan, but they have an interesting story. In particular, the story of Allan Pineda Lindo, who was born in the Philippines to a black American father and a Filipina mother, who farmed sweet potatoes with his family, who was adopted by an American 'foster parent', who joined the Black Eyed Peas in L.A. All good stuff that'll make a good documentary one day. Certainly 'keepin' it real' in a way that a lot more posturing hip hop artists couldn't even conceive of.

And yet, the man has a damn stupid moniker. I get that "APL" is his initials, but it doesn't explain the '.de' (Germany?) or the 'ap' or the full stops in between or the all-lower-case or the question of how on earth you're supposed to pronounce it (it kind of looks like a url). In addition, will.i.am is a pretty stupid name. But apl.de.ap certainly trumps even that. Do people call him apl.de.ap on a daily basis? Do they call him 'apl' for short? Do people confuse him with Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter?

Note: as of a month after this entry, I've noticed that almost half of the visits I get to this blog come from people googling "How to pronounce apl.de.ap". Since the answer isn't really contained here, I'll have to add it - as best as I can. I can see a few websites that say that the first part is indeed as the fruit. So it makes sense for the third part to be a reduplication of that: app, as in there's an for that. That really only lives the second half, which could be 'day' as in 'midnight come and me wan go home' or 'dee' as in 'Dee Snyder'. So that leaves us with one of the two following pronunciations:

 APPLE-DAY-APP or APPLE-DEE-AP.

 Do with that what you will...