this site is dedicated to the proposed name change of my beloved nation, the philippines. as described on the site:
We want to change the name of the country to once and for all escape the chains of colonialism. While we may by physically free, we are still bound by mental slavery. Every time we say Philippines, Filipino or anything derived from it such as Pinoy or Noypi, we are in essence bowing down and showing our allegiance to the ghost of King Philip II of Spain.
so what do you think about the proposed name change of our nation?
You guys have to be joking! Don’t you remember Shakespeare?
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet…Changing the name of the country achieves nothing. It is superficial. It’s best if we accept it as it is and do something about who we are as people. The problem with this country is not its name, but its people!
You guys must have been born after Marcos’s dictatorship because if you were born before those dark days in our history, you might have supported his plans to calls us Maharlikas. The name might sound noble, but what is nobility if one does not have a job, a house, something to eat, and most of all, freedom? Would you still be considered noble? A Maharlika?
I recommend you all read @iwriteasiwrite and @brownmonkeytheory’s exchange on why we are called Filipinos and what it means. Maybe by then you will all realize the value of the name of the country.
Oh! And in case you didn’t notice, we have a neighbor who used to be called Burma, its oppressive military dictators renamed it Myanmar to herald a new age for the country and its people. It didn’t make any difference. The people, despite being poor, deprived, and uneducated, would rather be called Burmese than Myanmarese (?). The former name represented a long history which, though shamed in recent years by the military junta, still represents the nation which their founding fathers fought and died for. We should learn something from them.
You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m not even going to bother clicking through (ok I lied I did). I think you and @brownmonkeytheory effectively covered all of the major points.
But to answer the question directly, no. In no way or form does this type of a ‘movement’ show depth of understanding of Philippine history, or appreciate the realities of the process of acculturation and evolution that took place in the development of the Philippine identity.
The problem is not that we don’t have a real identity, the problem lies in our continued superficial reading of the development of our history and culture. This type of a “noPhilippines” shows nothing more than the worst example of our continued misunderstanding of self and country. It indicates, as do those who deride our ‘low culture’, a sort of cultural and heritage self-loathing. Get thee to a psychologist. Or at the very least a decent Philippine history book or at least a historian (not in the Agoncillo/Constantino vein). As a matter of fact, if I had the opportunity, I would specifically ask if they just finished reading Renato Constantino.
@ellobofilipino struck the nail on the head; the name is not the people. The culture and history are. But I would just like to add that the name should mean something, Philippines as a name captures much.
To do violence to your culture and history is to do violence to your identity and self. @brownmonkeytheory is absolutely correct. The process of becoming (so well discussed by Joaquin and Roces and Zialcita) is our history. It is who we are. And it is unique and complex and fascinating.
There have been some moves over the last 110 years to rename the country. Most have fallen flat on their face when openly discussed. Namely because most of the principals behind the moves have shown a complete lack of real understanding (should I mention we were named after San Lazaro first and then Prince Philip II?) and appreciation for who we are and what we did. In discussions they have betrayed this and usually fallen to typical rote talking points about ‘colonization’ and ‘bad juju’.
In the early years of the American occupation, likely as part of their move to prop up Jose Rizal as the national hero, there was even an attempt to rename the Philippines “Rizaliana”. This was later picked up by Salvador Araneta, to hilarious results of course. It goes without saying that Jose Rizal would have been aghast by the movement, as in any movement in the same vein there after. We do not realize this, but a central part of the move for reform and later independence was the acceptance of the name ‘Filipino’. It meant something to take that name and be called it with pride. In the actions of many in the country today, and misguided attempts like this, we inevitably trample on the accomplishments and dreams of our forebears.
Later on we had these moves to Maharlika. Which were hilarious in and of themselves since they betrayed a perverse understanding of the term “Maharlika”.
Titled lords in Tagalog society - like Rajah Soliman of Manila or Lakandula of Tondo - were maginoo, not maharlika. The early dictionaries define maharlika unambiguously as freemen, libres, or freedmen, libertos - e.g. ‘Sa ikapat ang kamaharlikaan ko’ - I’m one-quarter free.’ Freedmen were former slaes, and when they were free they became, not nobles, but the class ancestors of the Filipino peasantry.
One does not know whether to laugh or cry that Morrison’s innocent mistranslation has persuaded three generations of Filipinos that their ancestors had an order of nobility called Maharlika, a myth of such popular appeal that one president’s wife soberly proposed renaming the Republic, Maharlika.
- Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino - William Henry Scott
A little bit of both, I would imagine.
It is what it is. We are who we are. And in the move to rename us anything other than Filipino and Philippines will ultimately fail, because that is who we are today. And it is nothing to be ashamed of, it is in fact, a point of pride amongst the nations of the world. That we so effectively subverted two eras of colonial imposition, and came out not shadows of empires, but an amalgamation all our own.
In its complexity and beauty, purely Filipino.
