It's high time we change the name of the Philippines.

 

We all know that the Philippines was named after King Philip II of Spain, yet we know very little about the king that we Filipinos have effectively immortalised.  This morning I woke up with an itch to find out more about the legendary king, so I turned to Google and Ask.com.

Turns out the king was the son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal.  Nothing wrong there, other than the fact Charles V and Isabella were first cousins.  In fact, Philip II belonged to the Habsburg family that had inbred over the centuries, with cousins marrying cousins, nieces marrying their uncles, that at some points in the inbreeding processes, mentally defective genes were perpetuated, causing insanity and Mongoloidism to run in the family.

Philip II himself took as his fourth wife a niece, Anne of Austria, who was the daughter of his mother's sister.  The union produced Philip III, who would eventually succeed Philip II, but only titularly.  In reality, Philip III was ruled by his servants, according to Wikipedia.

Eventually, the Habsburg inbreeding produced Charles II of Spain, who was known as El Hechizado (The Bewitched) because his physical and mental disabilities caused his oversized tongue to hang out of his mouth, which in turn caused him to constantly drool.  El Hechizado himself believed that he had been bewitched and welcomed his frequent exorcisms.

That's as far as the family went.

What about Philip II's rule as King of Spain, what was it like?  Having been installed by his father - Holy Roman Emperor Charles V - as king of Spain, Naples, the Netherlands, the colonies which included Chile and the Philippines, later also Portugal, Philip II was handed an empire by his doting father.  Philip II succeeded in alienating the Dutch, who successfully broke away. He lost several Spanish Armadas to the British, whicch defeats gave rise to British supremacy in the seven seas.  He managed to run the Spanish economy to the ground with his George Bush-like tax policies.  Philip II taxed traders, shopkeepers and businessmen heavily, but did not tax the far richer nobility and the Catholic Church, which really controlled the wealth in the country.  At one point, the interest on Spain's foreign loans had reached 40% of gross domestic product, and Spain was forced to declare bankruptcy.  It was one of four bankruptcies of the Spanish throne.

His "every tenth coin" policy exacerbated his tenuous relationship with the Dutch, who revolted against the 10% sales tax Philip II had imposed, leading to the Dutch declaration of independence from the Spanish king in 1581.

Philip II was considered the first true king of Spain:  his father, Charles V, was actually a Holy Roman Emperor.  The Spanish empire that he inherited from his father had its zenith during his reign, but his mismanagement of his kingly duties also spelled the doom for that empire.  The fact that his Habsburg successors had grossly defective genes hastened furtther the decline of the Spanish empire.

Eventually, a chap named Phlip of Bourbon managed to succeed into the throne and founded the Bourbon family, which rules Spain to this day, represented by the current King Juan Carlos.

Now that we know who that King Philip II was that the Philippines was named after, do we still feel that somehow the Philippines is linked to a great man?  Why is the Philippines the only country in the world that is named after a European King?  In fact, named after any king?  There are two different accounts:  one account says that Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in a burst of paternal enthusiasm named the Philippines after his son, Philip II, in 1540, when the latter was 13 years old and showing promise as a future king.  Another account (from Wikipedia) says Philip II named the Philippines after himself when he was already king, sometime after 1556.

Why was Mexico not named after a Spanish king?  Or Chile?  Or Argentina?

Myanmar.

The British named the territory east of India and west of Malaya "Burma" probably because they mispronounced the word Bamar.  The Bamars were the majority - approaching 70% of the population - in what is now Myanmar.  Myanmar appears to be a coined word combining Myan, which stands for an agglomeration of races, and Mar (which stands for Bamar).  Myanmar was the old name of the land, far predating the English concoction, Burma.

In 1989, the Burmese changed their country's name back to Myanmar, forever erasing the sorest vestige of their British colonial experience.  The U.S. has never officially accepted the name Myanmar, however the U.N. has and the changeover is a done deal.

Beijing and Mumbai

We all know about Peking's switch back to its old name, Beijing, and Bombay's recent change back to its ancient name, Mumbai.

Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan

The probable next Prime Minister of Japan, Senzo Abe, says he wants a new constitution, not the one that the American military forced upon the Japanese population after the Second World War.

Malaysia was of course once Malaya and Borneo.  Indonesia was formerly known as the Dutch East Indies. Taiwan was once known as Formosa.

The Asianization of much of Asia is a continuous process that started after the Second World War, when countries in Asia gained their independence from the Western powers and from Japan.

Time to change the name of the Philippines

It is against this backdrop and against the backdrop of the current drive to amend the Philippine constitution that I appeal to my fellow Filipinos (I'm a dual citizen) to reconsider a proposal that was made a few decades ago to change the name of the Philippines.  The name that was selected by its proponents was "Maharlika," which, while cute, did not strike the fancy of anyone in the Philippines.

The Philippines does not have a long tradition as a nation, such as Myanmar, but neither did Malaysia, nor Indonesia for that matter.  We cannot go back in our history and pull a name such as Myanmar, or Beijing, or Mumbai and say, "here, from now on we will be known by our old ancestral name, forever slaying our colonial fathers."

Crafting a new name will have to be done by the current generations, now that we have more than a century of experience as a nation, in addition to more than four centuries of the Spanish cross and American modernizing influences.

My suggestions

I want to start the ball rolling by suggesting a few names.  I hope that others would suggest their own until we can come to a consensus.  The risk is that the Filipino people will ignore us, but the possible rewards are great.  A lot of other Filipinos might be thinking the same thing, and the movement could snowball.

          Silanganan - from the phrase, "Perlas ng Silanganan" which loosely translates to "pearl of the Orient Sea."

          Bayaniland - mimicking Thailand, literally land of heroes, obviously referring to the heroic struggles of most Filipinos to survive their abject poverty, but historically, the herioic struggles of people such as Diego Silang, Lapu-Lapu, Bonifacio, Rizal, Ninoy Aquino, etc.

 

          Bayanihan - literally, being heroes for each other.
          

I could go on, as you may expect, but more than anything, dear readers, I need your inputs.

(The author took a much-needed break over the summer, and is only now returning to his two weblogs.)