Names of the Philippines

Present name

The 1987 Constitution provides that Filipino and English be official languages of the Philippines. It does not contain a provision specifically designating an official name for the country; however, "Republic of the Philippines" is used consistently throughout its provisions (in English). Article XIV, section 8 of the Constitution also mandates that the constitution be also promulgated in Filipino but no such official Filipino version exists. "Republika ng Pilipinas" is the de facto name of the country used in Filipino. When standing alone in English, the country's name is always preceded by the article the.^[7][8][9] However, the definite article ang does not precede the name in Filipino contexts.

The country has throughout its history been known as Filipinas. The earliest known use of Pilipinas in Tagalog was by the

• Panyupayana. Scholars and traders from the Indian subcontinent historically referred to the Philippines as Panyupayana, a term which emanated from the geopolitical orientation of the Indians, that started with the cosmological orientation. This is manifested by the Puranas and other Indian literature, such as Ramayana and Mahabharata,^[15][16] which also has versions in the Philippines such as Maharadia Lawana.^[17][18]
• Spanish to be the island of Mindoro.^[5] This was further proved by Ferdinand Blumentritt in his 1882 book, Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen (An Attempt to the Study of Ethnography of the Philippines) that Ma-i was the Chinese local name of present-day Mindoro.^[19] On the other hand, historians claimed that Ma-i was not an island, but all the south of South Sea islands groups and Manila itself,^[20] which was known to be an overseas Chinese settlement which was in constant contact with the Chinese mainland as early as the 9th century AD.^[21]
  • Ma-i consists of the 三洲 (
    Busuanga").^[22]
    • Aside from 三洲, Ma-i also consists of the islands of Pai-p'u-yen (巴布延,
      Lingayen"), Liu-sung (呂宋, Hokkien POJ: Lū-sòng, Mandarin Pinyin: Lǚsòng, "Luzon") and Li-ban (盧邦, Hokkien POJ: Lô͘-pang, Mandarin Pinyin: Lúbāng, "Lubang").^[23] It was said that these islands had contacts with Chinese traders from Canton (Guangdong) as early as 982 AD.^[19][20]
  • Liusung (呂宋, Hokkien POJ: Lū-sòng, Mandarin Pinyin: Lǚsòng) was the name ascribed by the Chinese to the present-day island of Luzon. It originated from the Tagalog word lusong, a wooden mortar that is used to pound rice. When the Spanish produced maps of the Philippines during the early 17th century, they called the island Luçonia which was later respelled as Luzonia, then Luzon.^[24]
• Las islas de San Lázaro (St. Lazarus' Islands). Named by
  Samar (now Eastern Samar) on the feast day of Saint Lazarus of Bethany.^[5]
• Las islas de Poniente (Islands to the West). Another name from Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 when he learned that the Las islas de San Lázaro also included Cebu and Leyte islands.^[25] However, various sources claimed that Magellan was not the one who renamed the area, but his chroniclers instead. The name came from the fact that the islands were reached from Spain en route approaching the left part of the globe.^[5] Conversely, the Portuguese called the archipelago Ilhas do oriente (Islands to the East) because they approached the islands from the east of Portugal in the late 1540s.^[26]
  • The Portuguese referred the whole island of
    ilhas Luções, or Luzones Islands.^[26]
  • Mindanao was formerly called ilhas de Liquíos Celebes because of the existence of Celebes Sea south of Mindanao.^[26]
  • Caesarea Caroli or Karoli was the name given by Villalobos or De la Torre to the island of Mindanao when they reached the sea near it in 1543. This was named after Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire (and I of Spain).^[27][28][29]
  • The southern island of
    Viceroy of New Spain who commissioned Villalobos expedition to the Philippines.^[2]
  • Villalobos also named the
    Leyte as Tendaya.^[30]
• Pearl of the Orient/Pearl of the Orient Seas (
  Jesuit missionary Fr. Juan J. Delgado in 1751.^[31] In his last poem Mi último adiós, Dr. José Rizal referred the country with this name.^[32] In the 1960 revision of Lupang Hinirang, the Philippine national anthem, the Tagalog version of this phrase was included as the translation from the original Spanish.^[33]

• Maniolas. According to Fr. Francisco Colin in 1663, a
  Pedro A. Paterno. Rizal also said that the country was recorded to Ptolemy's maps when a sailor named Hippalus told him the existence of "beautiful islands" in southeastern Far East.^[26][37] However, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera rejected this notion on his 1910 book, Notas para una cartografia de Filipinas (Notes for the Philippine Cartography).^[38]
• Baroussai. Along with Maniolas is the Baroussai which was also quoted from Ptolemy. Barrousai is believed to be the Visayas with Mindanao, thus, composing majority of the now Philippine archipelago.^[39][40] Some scholars however have identified Baroussai with Barus in Sumatra.^[41][42]
• conjectural anthropology that Ophir is the Philippines because the scented wood Solomon received from Ophir also exists in the Islands.^[44] This notion was however, later dismissed by modern historians as merely alluding and comparing the Philippines' position to the Spanish economy with that of Ophir to Solomon's kingdom—the sudden discovery and colonisation of the Islands bringing wealth and prosperity to the realm.^[45]
• Tawalisi, was an ancient kingdom in Southeast Asia reached by explorer Ibn Battuta. He reached the kingdom when he left Sumatra and headed towards China. According to the historical accounts of the explorer, he met Urduja, a legendary warrior princess from Pangasinan. However, according to William Henry Scott, Tawilisi and its warrior-princess Urduja are "fabulous, fairy-tale, fiction".^[46]