‘Sampernandu’ back to San Fernando on Facebook

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—Social networking giant Facebook has corrected a glitch that automatically spelled “San Fernando” as “Sampernandu,” no matter how users tried to fix their posts.

Facebook users were able to type “San Fernando” on June 14. Facebook restored the original name almost 18 months after an unexpected malfunction in January last year prompted the site to adopt the Wikipedia search alias, “Sampernandu,” as the city’s official name, according to Alwyn Balingit, founder of the government-authorized “City of San Fernando, Pampanga Community Page.”

A search or page alias is used online by users who want to provide access to unfamiliar topics.

For example, a product may be identified only by coded numbers so it is given a more familiar alias to help quicken searches online.

“The Wikipedia [an online encyclopedia] is an open source, and anyone can put up aliases for places. For example, ‘New York, New York’ has a Wikipedia alias of ‘Big Apple,’” said Balingit.

The “Sampernandu” alias, however, was embedded in the Facebook business addresses and the Facebook profiles of those who lived or were born in the Pampanga capital, he said.

Facebook did not have the same problem with “New York, New York,” Balingit said.

He said the corrections had so far benefited Facebook users in Southeast Asia and the United States.

Fixing the problem took time.

Balingit petitioned Facebook about the error and was able to remove “Sampernandu” as a Wikipedia search alias, with the help of Wikipedia administrators. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon