Why Chamorros call all Filipinos ‘Tagålu’ (and other naming mysteries)

Live from Saipan By Zaldy Dandan

Saipan — In an op-ed published by Marianas Variety two months ago, a Chamorro language expert pointed out that whenever Chamorros use the word “Tagålu,” they are referring to “people from the Philippines.” Tagålu is the Chamorro version of “Tagalog,” the largest ethnic group in the Philippines. Tagalog also refers to the language spoken by the Tagalogs that is the basis of the national language officially known as Filipino. The citizens of the Philippines are also known as Filipinos.

So why is it that Chamorros in the Northern Marianas and Guam usually refer to Filipinos as “Tagålu”? There are many other ethnic groups in the Philippines, including Cebuano/Visaya, Ilocano, Pampangueño, Bicolano, Boholano, Hiligaynon, Waray and the Moros of Mindanao, comprising 13 distinct ethnolinguistic groups. The Philippines, composed of more than 7,000 islands, has as many as 195 languages, according to experts.

So, once again, we ask: Why is everyone from the “P.I.” referred to as Tagålu by the people of the Marianas?

The simplest answer is that most of the natives from the Philippines brought by Spain to the Marianas were Tagalogs. I’m referring to the historical period of over 300 years when Las Islas Filipinas and Las Marianas were Spanish possessions.

Let me explain further. In the Philippines under Spanish colonial rule, the natives were called “Indios” — that is, “Indians.” The “Indians,” for their part, identified themselves by their regional origins, such as Tagalog, Cebuano and others.

Don’t worry, it gets more confusing.

In the Spanish Philippines, “Filipinos” referred to Spaniards born in the colony. The islands were named after Spain’s greatest monarch, Felipe II (Philip II), and being called “Filipino” was considered an honor—one not extended to the natives. They remained “Indians,” who were Tagalogs, Cebuanos, among others. In other words, the Chamorro word “Tagålu” traces back to the islands’ Spanish era.

In the late 19th century, the Tagalog-led Philippine revolution declared that the term “Filipinos” applied to everyone born in Filipinas regardless of their regional origins. But in the southern island of Mindanao, the indigenous Muslim people, whom the Spaniards called Moros, “bristled at the very notion of being called Filipinos because they had not become vassals of Philip either politically or spiritually.” (See “Revolt in Mindanao: The Rise of Islam in Philippine Politics” by T. J. S George.)

We’re now going to delve further into Philippine history.

The long and short of it is that the Philippines is a Spanish creation cast in cement, so to speak, by its next colonial ruler, the U.S.  If the Philippines had been allowed by the Western powers to become independent at the end of the 19th century, the islands would most likely have broken up into rival “republics,” similar to Spain’s former colonies in Latin America. The “Indians” of Filipinas were, to begin with, fiercely regionalistic. (Some say they still are.) Mindanao, for its part, would eventually have been swallowed by British Malaya, which had already “leased” North Borneo (Sabah) from the Sultanate of Sulu, Mindanao’s most significant political entity. There was also infighting among the Moros themselves.

It was Spain that invented a nation comprising over 7,000 islands, and it was the U.S., by finally “pacifying” the Moros of Mindanao, that applied the finishing touches to “the Philippine Islands.” (Saying that they refused to be a “colony” of Christian Filipinos, the Moros of Mindanao waged a bloody four-year “war of liberation” in the 1970s, which resulted in an estimated 120,000 deaths and created one million internal refugees. But that’s another story.)

To be sure, the Moros weren’t the only ones in the Philippines who were offended by the “colonial” name of their country and its people. In 1978, a Filipino lawmaker proposed renaming the Philippines “Maharlika,” a pre-Hispanic native word that supposedly connoted “nobility.”

President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. claimed that during World War II, he headed a guerilla unit called “Maharlika.” According to U.S. Army records, however, at no time did it recognize that any unit designating itself as Maharlika ever existed as a guerrilla force during the Japanese occupation of the then-U.S. Commonwealth of the Philippines from 1942 to 1945.

But no matter. Marcos remained enamored by the word, which, during his martial law regime, became “a trendy name for streets, edifices, banquet halls, villages and cultural organizations.”

In 2019, President Rodrigo Duterte said Marcos was “right.” The Philippines should be renamed Maharlika, which, Duterte said, connoted a “concept of serenity and peace.”

However, according to Dr. Jaime Veneracion, chairman of the University of the Philippines’ Department of History, “maharlika” actually meant “vassal.” Among the definitions of this word were: 1) “A person who held land from a feudal lord and received protection in return for homage and allegiance”; 2) “A bondman; a slave”; 3) “A subordinate or dependent.”

So why was there a widespread belief that “maharlika” meant “noble”? Because, experts say, the word sounds so much like the Sanskrit “mahardikka,” which means noble. However, the experts added, “maharlika” was most likely derived from “maha lingam,” which is also Sanskrit, but it means “great phallus.”

Which, some may say, sounds way better than “Tagålu.”

  Zaldy Dandan is editor of the CNMI’s oldest newspaper, Marianas Variety. His fourth book, “If He Isn’t Insane Then He Should Be: Stories & Poems from Saipan,” is available on amazon.com/.

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