The nameFilipino, as ademonym, was derived from the termlas Islas Filipinas'the Philippine Islands',[53] the name given to the archipelago in 1543 by theSpanish explorer andDominican priestRuy López de Villalobos, in honor ofPhilip II of Spain.[54] During theSpanish period, natives of the Philippine islands were usually known in the Philippines itself by the generic termsindio ("Indian (native of theEast Indies)") orindigena'indigenous',[55] while the generic termchino ("Chinese"),[56][57] short for "indio chino" was used inSpanish America to differentiate from theNative Americanindios of the Spanish territories in theAmericas and theWest Indies. The termFilipino was sometimes added by Spanish writers to distinguish theindio chino native of the Philippine archipelago from theindio of the Spanish territories in the Americas.[56][58][54] The termIndio Filipino appears as a term of self-identification beginning in the 18th century.[54]
In 1955,Agnes Newton Keith wrote that a 19th century edict prohibited the use of the word "Filipino" to refer to indios. This reflected popular belief, although no such edict has been found.[54] The idea that the termFilipino was not used to refer toindios until the 19th century has also been mentioned by historians such as Salah Jubair[59] andRenato Constantino.[60] However, in a 1994 publication the historianWilliam Henry Scott identified instances in Spanish writing where "Filipino" did refer to "indio" natives.[61] Instances of such usage include theRelación de las Islas Filipinas (1604) ofPedro Chirino, in which he wrote chapters entitled "Of the civilities, terms of courtesy, and good breeding among the Filipinos" (Chapter XVI), "Of the Letters of the Filipinos" (Chapter XVII), "Concerning the false heathen religion, idolatries, and superstitions of the Filipinos" (Chapter XXI), "Of marriages, dowries, and divorces among the Filipinos" (Chapter XXX),[62] while also using the term "Filipino" to refer unequivocally to the non-Spaniard natives of the archipelago like in the following sentence:
The first and last concern of the Filipinos in cases of sickness was, as we have stated, to offer some sacrifice to theiranitos ordiwatas, which were their gods.[63]
In theCrónicas (1738) of Juan Francisco de San Antonio, the author devoted a chapter to "The Letters, languages and politeness of the Philippinos", while Francisco Antolín argued in 1789 that "the ancient wealth of the Philippinos is much like that which the Igorots have at present".[54] These examples prompted the historianWilliam Henry Scott to conclude that during the Spanish period:
[...]the people of the Philippines were called Filipinos when they were practicing their own culture—or, to put it another way, before they becameindios.[54]
— William Henry Scott, Barangay- Sixteenth Century Philippine Culture and Society
While the Philippine-born Spaniards during the 19th century began to be calledespañoles filipinos, logically contracted to justFilipino, to distinguish them from the Spaniards born in Spain, they themselves resented the term, preferring to identify themselves as"hijo/s del país" ("sons of the country").[54]
todos los nacidos en Filipinas sin distincion de origen ni de raza. All those born in the Philippines without distinction of origin or race.
— Wenceslao E. Retaña, Diccionario De Filipinismos: Con La Revisión De Lo Que Al Respecto Lleva Publicado La Real Academia Española
American authorities during theAmerican colonial era also started to colloquially use the termFilipino to refer to the native inhabitants of the archipelago,[70] but despite this, it became the official term for allcitizens of the sovereign independentRepublic of the Philippines, including non-native inhabitants of the country as per thePhilippine nationality law.[54] However, the term has been rejected as an identification in some instances by minorities who did not come under Spanish control, such as theIgorot andMuslimMoros.[54][60]
The lack of the letter "F" in the 1940–1987 standardizedTagalog alphabet (Abakada) caused the letter "P" to be substituted for "F", though the alphabets or writing scripts of some non-Tagalog ethnic groups included the letter "F". Upon official adoption of the modern, 28-letterFilipino alphabet in 1987, the termFilipino was preferred overPilipino.[citation needed] Locally, some still use "Filipino" to refer to the people and "Pilipino" to refer to the language, but in international use "Filipino" is the usual form for both.
A number of Filipinos refer to themselves colloquially as "Pinoy" (feminine: "Pinay"), which is a slang word formed by taking the last four letters of "Filipino" and adding thediminutivesuffix "-y". Or the non-gender or gender fluid form Pinxy (seldom used in the country but used amongstFilipino-American communities).
In 2020, the neologismFilipinx appeared; a demonym applied only to those of Filipino heritage in the diaspora and specifically referring to and coined byFilipino Americans[citation needed] imitatingLatinx, itself a recently coined gender-inclusive alternative toLatino orLatina. An online dictionary made an entry of the term, applying it to all Filipinos within the Philippines or in the diaspora.[71] In actual practice, however, the term is unknown among and not applied to Filipinos living in the Philippines, andFilipino itself is already treated as gender-neutral. The dictionary entry resulted in confusion, backlash and ridicule from Filipinos residing in the Philippines who never identified themselves with the foreign term.[72][73]
Native Filipinos were also calledManilamen (orManila men) by English-speaking regions or Tagalas by Spanish-speakers during the colonial era. They were mostly sailors and pearl-divers and established communities in various ports around the world.[74][75] One of the notable settlements of Manilamen is the community ofSaint Malo, Louisiana, founded at around 1763 to 1765 by escaped slaves and deserters from theSpanish Navy.[76][77][78][79] There were also significant numbers of Manilamen inNorthern Australia and theTorres Strait Islands in the late 1800s who were employed in thepearl hunting industries.[80][81]
InMexico (especially in the Mexican states ofGuerrero andColima),Filipino immigrants arriving toNew Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries via theManila galleons were calledchino, which led to the confusion of early Filipino immigrants with that of the much laterChinese immigrants to Mexico from the 1880s to the 1940s. A genetic study in 2018 has also revealed that around one-third of the population of Guerrero have 10% Filipino ancestry.[82][83]
The oldest indisputable modern human (Homo sapiens) remains in thePhilippines are the "Tabon Man" fossils discovered in theTabon Caves in the 1960s byRobert B. Fox, ananthropologist from theNational Museum. These were dated to thePaleolithic, at around 26,000 to 24,000 years ago. The Tabon Cave complex also indicates that the caves were inhabited by humans continuously from at least 47,000 ± 11,000 years ago to around 9,000 years ago.[86][87] The caves were also later used as a burial site by unrelatedNeolithic andMetal Age cultures in the area.[88]
Migration of the sea-faringAustronesian peoples and theirlanguages.The Negritos are descendants of one of the earliest groups of modern humans to reach thePhilippines
The Tabon Cave remains (along with theNiah Cave remains ofBorneo and theTam Pa Ling remains ofLaos) are part of the "FirstSundaland People", the earliest branch ofanatomically modern humans to reachIsland Southeast Asia at the time of lowered sea levels ofSundaland, with only one 3km sea crossing.[89] They entered the Philippines from Borneo viaPalawan at around 50,000 to 40,000 years ago. Their descendants are collectively known as theNegrito people, although they are highly genetically divergent from each other. Philippine Negritos show a high degree ofDenisovan Admixture, similar toPapuans andIndigenous Australians, in contrast to Malaysian and Andamanese Negritos (theOrang Asli). This indicates that Philippine Negritos, Papuans, and Indigenous Australians share a common ancestor that admixed withDenisovans at around 44,000 years ago.[90] Negritos include ethnic groups like theAeta (including the Agta, Arta, Dumagat, etc.) of Luzon, theAti ofWestern Visayas, theBatak ofPalawan, and theMamanwa ofMindanao. Today they comprise just 0.03% of the total Philippine population.[91]
After the Negritos, were two early Paleolithic migrations from East Asian (basalAustric, an ethnic group which includesAustroasiatics) people, they entered the Philippines at around 15,000 and 12,000 years ago, respectively. Like the Negritos, they entered the Philippines during the lowered sea levels during thelast ice age, when the only water crossings required were less than 3km wide (such as theSibutu strait).[89] They retain partial genetic signals among theManobo people and theSama-Bajau people ofMindanao.
The last wave of prehistoric migrations to reach the Philippines was theAustronesian expansion which started in theNeolithic at around 4,500 to 3,500 years ago, when a branch ofAustronesians fromTaiwan (the ancestralMalayo-Polynesian-speakers) migrated to theBatanes Islands andLuzon. They spread quickly throughout the rest of the islands of the Philippines and became the dominant ethnolinguistic group. They admixed with the earlier settlers, resulting in the modern Filipinos – which though predominantly genetically Austronesian still show varying genetic admixture with Negritos (and vice versa for Negrito ethnic groups which show significant Austronesian admixture).[92][93] Austronesians possessed advanced sailing technologies and colonized the Philippines via sea-borne migration, in contrast to earlier groups.[94][95]
Since at least the 3rd century, various ethnic groups established several communities. These were formed by the assimilation of various native Philippine kingdoms.[91]South Asian andEast Asian people together with the people of the Indonesian archipelago and the Malay Peninsula, traded with Filipinos and introducedHinduism andBuddhism to the native tribes of the Philippines. Most of these people stayed in the Philippines where they were slowly absorbed into local societies.
Even scattered barangays, through the development of inter-island and international trade, became more culturally homogeneous by the 4th century.Hindu-Buddhist culture and religion flourished among the noblemen in this era.
In the period between the 7th to the beginning of the 15th centuries, numerous prosperous centers of trade had emerged, including the Kingdom ofNamayan which flourished alongsideManila Bay,[104][105]Cebu,Iloilo,[106]Butuan, the Kingdom ofSanfotsi situated inPangasinan, the Kingdom of Luzon now known asPampanga which specialized in trade with most of what is now known as Southeast Asia and with China, Japan and theKingdom of Ryukyu inOkinawa.
From the 9th century onwards, a large number ofArab traders from the Middle East settled in theMalay Archipelago and intermarried with the localMalay, Bruneian, Malaysian, Indonesian andLuzon andVisayas indigenous populations.[107]
Datu – TheTagalogmaginoo, theKapampanganginu and theVisayantumao were the nobility social class among various cultures of the pre-colonial Philippines. Among the Visayans, the tumao were further distinguished from the immediate royal families or a ruling class.
Timawa – The timawa class were free commoners of Luzon and the Visayas who could own their own land and who did not have to pay a regular tribute to a maginoo, though they would, from time to time, be obliged to work on a datu's land and help in community projects and events. They were free to change their allegiance to another datu if they married into another community or if they decided to move.
Maharlika – Members of the Tagalog warrior class known as maharlika had the same rights and responsibilities as the timawa, but in times of war they were bound to serve their datu in battle. They had to arm themselves at their own expense, but they did get to keep the loot they took. Although they were partly related to the nobility, the maharlikas were technically less free than the timawas because they could not leave a datu's service without first hosting a large public feast and paying the datu between 6 and 18 pesos in gold – a large sum in those days.
Alipin – Commonly described as "servant" or "slave". However, this is inaccurate. The concept of the alipin relied on a complex system of obligation and repayment through labor in ancient Philippine society, rather than on the actual purchase of a person as in Western and Islamicslavery. Members of the alipin class who owned their own houses were more accurately equivalent to medieval Europeanserfs and commoners.
By the 15th century, Arab and Indian missionaries and traders from Malaysia and Indonesia brought Islam to the Philippines, where it both replaced and was practiced together with indigenous religions. Before that, indigenous tribes of the Philippines practiced a mixture ofAnimism,Hinduism andBuddhism. Native villages, calledbarangays were populated by locals called Timawa (Middle Class/freemen) and Alipin (servants and slaves). They were ruled byRajahs,Datus andSultans, a class calledMaginoo (royals) and defended by theMaharlika (Lesser nobles, royal warriors and aristocrats).[91] These Royals and Nobles are descended from native Filipinos with varying degrees ofIndo-Aryan andDravidian, which is evident in today's DNA analysis among South East Asian Royals. This tradition continued among the Spanish andPortuguese traders who also intermarried with the local populations.[116]
The first census in the Philippines was in 1591, based on tributes collected. The tributes counted the total founding population of the Spanish Philippines as 667,612 people.[117]: 177 [118][119] 20,000 were Chinese migrant traders,[120] at different times: around 15,600 individuals were Latino soldier-colonists who were cumulatively sent from Peru and Mexico and they were shipped to the Philippines annually,[121][122] 3,000 were Japanese residents,[123] and 600 were pure Spaniards from Europe.[124] There was a large but unknown number ofSouth Asian Filipinos, as the majority of the slaves imported into the archipelago were fromBengal and Southern India,[125] addingDravidian speaking South Indians andIndo-European speakingBengalis into the ethnic mix.
The Philippines was governed by the Spaniards. The arrival of Portuguese explorerFerdinand Magellan (Portuguese:Fernão de Magalhães) in 1521 began a period of European immigration. During the Spanish period, the Philippines was part of theViceroyalty ofNew Spain, which was governed and administered fromMexico City. Early Spanish settlers were mostly explorers, soldiers, government officials and religiousmissionaries born in Spain and Mexico. Most Spaniards who settled were ofBasque ancestry,[126] but there were also settlers ofAndalusian,Catalan, andMoorish descent.[127] ThePeninsulares (governors born in Spain), mostly ofCastilian ancestry, settled in the islands to govern their territory. Most settlers married the daughters ofrajahs,datus, andsultans to reinforce the alliances of the islands. TheGinoo andMaharlika castes (royals and nobles) in the Philippines prior to the arrival of the Spaniards formed the privilegedPrincipalía (nobility) during the early Spanish period.
British forces occupied Manila between 1762 and 1764 as a part of theSeven Years' War. However, the only part of the Philippines which the British held was theSpanish capital ofManila and the principal naval port ofCavite, both of which are located by theManila Bay. The war was ended by theTreaty of Paris (1763). At the end of the war the treaty signatories were not aware that Manila had been taken by the British and was being administered as a British colony. Consequently, no specific provision was made for the Philippines. Instead they fell under the general provision that all other lands not otherwise provided for be returned to theSpanish Empire.[139] ManyIndianSepoy troops and their British captains mutinied and were left in Manila and some parts of theIlocos andCagayan. TheIndian Filipinos in Manila settled atCainta, Rizal and the ones in the north settled inIsabela. Most were assimilated into the local population. Even before the British invasion, there were already also a large but unknown number ofIndian Filipinos as majority of the slaves imported into the archipelago were fromBengal or SouthernIndia,[140] addingDravidian speaking South Indians andIndo-European speakingBangladeshis into the ethnic mix.
A total of 110Manila-Acapulco galleons set sail between 1565 and 1815, during the Philippines trade with Mexico. Until 1593, three or more ships would set sail annually from each port bringing with them the riches of the archipelago to Spain. Europeancriollos,mestizos and Portuguese, French and Mexican descent from the Americas, mostly from Latin America came in contact with the Filipinos.Japanese,Indian andCambodian Christians who fled from religious persecutions and killing fields also settled in the Philippines during the 17th until the 19th centuries. The Mexicans especially were a major source of military migration to the Philippines and during the Spanish period they were referred to as guachinangos[141][142] and they readily intermarried and mixed with native Filipinos. Bernal, the author of the book "Mexico en Filipinas" contends, that they were middlemen, the guachinangos in contrast to the Spanish and criollos, known as Castila, that had positions in power and were isolated, the guachinangos in the meantime, had interacted with the natives of the Philippines, while in contrast, the exchanges between Castila and native were negligent. Following Bernal, these two groups—native Filipinos and the Castila—had been two "mutually unfamiliar castes" that had "no real contact." Between them, he clarifies however, were the Chinese traders and the guachinangos (Mexicans).[141] In the 1600s, Spain deployed thousands of Mexican and Peruvian soldiers across the many cities and presidios of the Philippines.[143]
Geographic distribution and year of settlement of the Latin-American immigrant soldiers assigned to the Philippines in the 1600s.[143]
With the inauguration of theSuez Canal in 1867, Spain opened the Philippines for international trade. European investors of British, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, and French nationality were among those who settled in the islands as business increased. More Spaniards and Chinese arrived during the next century. Many of these migrants intermarried with localmestizos and assimilated with the indigenous population.
In the late 1700s to early 1800s, Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga, an Agustinian Friar, in his Two Volume Book: "Estadismo de las islas Filipinas"[144][145] compiled a census of the Spanish-Philippines based on the tribute counts (Which represented an average family of seven to ten children[146] and two parents, per tribute)[147] and came upon the following statistics:[144]: 539 [145]: 31, 54, 113
Data reported for the 1800 as divided by ethnicity and province[144][145]
The Spanish-Filipino population as a proportion of the provinces widely varied; with as high as 19% of the population of Tondo province[144]: 539 (The most populous province and former name of Manila), to Pampanga 13.7%,[144]: 539 Cavite at 13%,[144]: 539 Laguna 2.28%,[144]: 539 Batangas 3%,[144]: 539 Bulacan 10.79%,[144]: 539 Bataan 16.72%,[144]: 539 Ilocos 1.38%,[145]: 31 Pangasinan 3.49%,[145]: 31 Albay 1.16%,[145]: 54 Cebu 2.17%,[145]: 113 Samar 3.27%,[145]: 113 Iloilo 1%,[145]: 113 Capiz 1%,[145]: 113 Bicol 20%,[148] andZamboanga 40%.[148] According to the data, in the Archdiocese of Manila which administers much of Luzon under it, about 10% of the population was Spanish-Filipino.[144]: 539 Across the whole Philippines, as estimated, the total ratio of Spanish Filipino tributes amount to 5% of the totality.[144][145]
Mestizos deEspañol (Spanish Mestizos), by Jean Mallat de Bassilan, c. 1846
In the 1860s to 1890s, in the urban areas of the Philippines, especially at Manila, according to burial statistics, as much as 3.3% of the population were pure European Spaniards and the pure Chinese were as high as 9.9%. The Spanish Filipino and Chinese Filipino Mestizo populations also fluctuated. Eventually, many families belonging to the non-native categories from centuries ago beyond the late 19th century diminished because their descendants intermarried enough and were assimilated into and chose to self-identify as Filipinos while forgetting their ancestor's roots[149] since during the Philippine Revolution to modern times, the term "Filipino" was expanded to include everyone born in the Philippines coming from any race, as per thePhilippine nationality law.[150][151] That would explain the abrupt drop of otherwise high Chinese, Spanish and mestizo, percentages across the country by the time of the first American census in 1903.[152] By the 20th century, the remaining ethnic Spaniards and ethnic Chinese, replenished by further Chinese migrants in the 20th century, now later came to compose the modernSpanish Filipino community andChinese Filipino community respectively, where families of such background contribute a significant share of thePhilippine economy today,[133][134][3][136][137] where most in the current list of the Philippines' richest each year comprisebillionaires of eitherChinese Filipino background or the old elite families ofSpanish Filipino background.
ThePhilippine–American War resulted in the deaths of at least 200,000 Filipino civilians.[155] Some estimates for total civilian dead reach up to 1,000,000.[156][157] After the Philippine–American War, the United States civil governance was established in 1901, withWilliam Howard Taft as the first AmericanGovernor-General.[158] A number of Americans settled in the islands and thousands of interracial marriages between Americans and Filipinos have taken place since then. Owing to the strategic location of the Philippines, as many as 21 bases and 100,000 military personnel were stationed there since the United States first colonized the islands in 1898. These bases were decommissioned in 1992 after the end of theCold War, but left behind thousands ofAmerasian children.[159] The country gainedindependence from the United States in 1946. ThePearl S. Buck International Foundation estimates there are 52,000 Amerasians scattered throughout the Philippines. However, according to the center of Amerasian Research, there might be as many as 250,000Amerasians scattered across the cities ofClark,Angeles City,Manila, andOlongapo.[160] In addition, numerous Filipino men enlisted in the US Navy and made careers in it, often settling with their families in the United States. Some of their second- or third-generation families returned to the country.
Following its independence, the Philippines has seen both small and large-scale immigration into the country, mostly involving American, European, Chinese and Japanese peoples. After World War II,South Asians continued to migrate into the islands, most of which assimilated and avoided the local social stigma instilled by the early Spaniards against them by keeping a low profile or by trying to pass as Spanish mestizos. This was also true for the Arab and Chinese immigrants, many of whom are also post WWII arrivals. More recent migrations into the country byKoreans,Persians,Brazilians, and other Southeast Asians have contributed to the enrichment of the country's ethnic landscape, language and culture. Centuries ofmigration,diaspora,assimilation, andcultural diversity made most Filipinos accepting ofinterracial marriage andmulticulturalism.
Philippine nationality law is currently based upon the principle ofjus sanguinis and, therefore, descent from a parent who is a citizen of the Republic of the Philippines is the primary method of acquiring national citizenship. Birth in the Philippines to foreign parents does not in itself confer Philippine citizenship, although RA9139, the Administrative Naturalization Law of 2000, does provide a path for administrative naturalization of certain aliens born in the Philippines. Since many of the above historical groups came to the Philippines before its establishment as an independent state, many have also gained citizenship before the founding of either theFirst Philippines Republic orThird Republic of the Philippines. For example, manyCold-War-eraChinese migrants who had relatives in the Philippines attainFilipino citizenship for their children throughmarriage withChinese Filipino families that trace back to either the lateSpanish Era orAmerican Colonial Era. Likewise, many other modern expatriates from various countries, such as theUS, often come to thePhilippines to marry with aFilipino citizen, ensuring their future children attainFilipino citizenship and their Filipino spouses ensureproperty ownership.
Filipinos of mixed ethnic origins are still referred today asmestizos. However, in common popular parlance, mestizos usually refer to Filipinos mixed with Spanish or any other European ancestry. Filipinos mixed with any other foreign ethnicities are named depending on the non-Filipino part. Historically though, it was theMestizo deSangley (ChineseMestizo) that numbered the most amongmestizos,[166] though theMestizos deEspañol (SpanishMestizos) carried moresocial prestige due to thecaste system hierarchy that usually elevatedSpanish blood andChristianized natives to the peak, while most descendants of theMestizo deSangley (ChineseMestizo), despite assuming many of the important roles in the economic, social and political life of the nation, would readily assimilate into the fabric of Philippine society or sometimes falsely claim Spanish descent due to this situation.
People classified as 'blancos' (whites) were the insulares or "Filipinos" (a person born in the Philippines of pure Spanish descent), peninsulares (a person born in Spain of pure Spanish descent), Español mestizos (a person born in the Philippines of mixed Austronesian and Spanish ancestry) and tornatrás (a person born in the Philippines of mixed Austronesian, Chinese and Spanish ancestry).Manila was racially segregated, with blancos living in the walled city ofIntramuros, un-Christianized sangleys in Parían, Christianized sangleys and mestizos de sangley in Binondo and the rest of the 7,000 islands for the indios, with the exception of Cebu and several other Spanish posts. Only mestizos de sangley were allowed to enter Intramuros to work for whites (including mestizos de español) as servants and various occupations needed for the colony. Indio were native Austronesians, but as a legal classification, Indio were those who embraced Roman Catholicism and Austronesians who lived in proximity to the Spanish colonies.[citation needed]
People who lived outsideManila,Cebu and the major Spanish posts were classified as such: 'Naturales' were Catholic Austronesians of the lowland and coastal towns. The un-Catholic Negritos andAustronesians who lived in the towns were classified as 'salvajes' (savages) or 'infieles' (the unfaithful). 'Remontados' (Spanish for 'situated in the mountains') and 'tulisanes' (bandits) wereindigenous Austronesians and Negritos who refused to live in towns and took to the hills, all of whom were considered to live outside the social order as Catholicism was a driving force in Spanish everyday life, as well as determining social class in the territory. People of pure Spanish descent living in thePhilippines who were born in Spanish America were classified as 'americanos'. Mestizos and africanos born in Spanish America living in the Philippines kept their legal classification as such and usually came as indentured servants to the 'americanos'. The Philippine-born children of 'americanos' were classified as 'Ins'. The Philippine-born children of mestizos and Africanos from Spanish America were classified based on patrilineal descent.
Amestiza de sangley woman in a photograph by Francisco Van Camp, c. 1875
The termnegrito was coined by the Spaniards based on their appearance. The word 'negrito' would be misinterpreted and used by future European scholars as an ethnoracial term in and of itself. Both Christianized negritos who lived in the archipelago and un-Christianized negritos who lived in tribes outside were classified as 'negritos'. Christianized negritos who lived in Manila were not allowed to enter Intramuros and lived in areas designated for indios.
A person of mixedNegrito andAustronesian ancestry were classified based on patrilineal descent; the father's ancestry determined a child's legal classification. If the father was 'negrito' and the mother was 'India' (Austronesian), the child was classified as 'negrito'. If the father was 'indio' and the mother was 'negrita', the child was classified as 'indio'. Persons of Negrito descent were viewed as being outside the social order as they usually lived in tribes outside and resisted conversion toChristianity.
This legal system of racial classification based on patrilineal descent had no parallel anywhere in the Spanish-ruled territories in the Americas. In general, a son born of a sangley male and an indio or mestizo de sangley female was classified as mestizo de sangley; all subsequent male descendants were mestizos de sangley regardless of whether they married an India or a mestiza de sangley. A daughter born in such a manner, however, acquired the legal classification of her husband, i.e., she became an India if she married an indio but remained a mestiza de sangley if she married a mestizo de sangley or a sangley. In this way, a chino mestizo male descendant of a paternal sangley ancestor never lost his legal status as a mestizo de sangley no matter how little percentage of Chinese blood he had in his veins or how many generations had passed since his first Chinese ancestor; he was thus a mestizo de sangley in perpetuity.
However, a 'mestiza de sangley' who married a blanco ('Filipino', 'mestizo de español', 'peninsular' or 'americano') kept her status as 'mestiza de sangley'. But her children were classified as tornatrás. An 'India' who married a blanco also kept her status as India, but her children were classified as mestizo de español. A mestiza de español who married another blanco would keep her status as mestiza, but her status will never change from mestiza de español if she married a mestizo de español, Filipino or peninsular. In contrast, a mestizo (de sangley or español) man's status stayed the same regardless of whom he married. If a mestizo (de sangley or español) married a filipina (woman of pure Spanish descent), she would lose her status as a 'filipina' and would acquire the legal status of her husband and become a mestiza de español or sangley. If a 'filipina' married an 'indio', her legal status would change to 'India', despite being of pure Spanish descent.
Thede facto social stratification system based on class that continues to this day in the country had its beginnings in the Spanish area with a discriminating caste system.[167]
The Insulares, who already saw their distinct identity from the peninsulares adopted the termFilipino to refer to themselves. And among these Insulares Luis Rodriguez y Varela was the first to use it.[168] The use of the term was later adopted by the Spanish and Chinesemestizos or those born of mixed Chinese-indio or Spanish-indio descent. Late in the 19th century,José Rizal popularized the use of the termFilipino to refer to all those born in the Philippines, including the Indios.[169] When ordered to sign the notification of his death sentence, which described him as a Chinese mestizo, Rizal refused. He went to his death saying that he wasindio puro.[170][169]
After the Philippines' independence from Spain in 1898 and the word Filipino "officially" became a nationality that includes the entire population of the Philippines regardless of racial ancestry, as per thePhilippine nationality law and as described byWenceslao Retana'sDiccionario de filipinismos, where he definedFilipinos as follows,[69]
todos los nacidos en Filipinas sin distincion de origen ni de raza. All those born in the Philippines without distinction of origin or race.
— Wenceslao E. Retaña, Diccionario De Filipinismos: Con La Revisión De Lo Que Al Respecto Lleva Publicado La Real Academia Española
A Spaniard and Criollo talking, while Natives are cockfight. Aetas also in the background. detail from Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas(1734).
Mestizos(Right), Mardicans andJapanese(Left) inhabitants of the Philippines. from Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas(1734)
Depiction of the Luzon Filipinos in 1700s from the Chinese bookHuang Qing Zhigong Tu 1769. The Chinese called them Lu Song whom they recognized as a prosperous and powerful "kingdom" under the Spanish Empire.
The aboriginal settlers of the Philippines were primarilyNegrito groups. Negritos today comprise a small minority of the nation's overall population, and received significant geneflow from Austronesian groups, as well as an even earlier "Basal-East Asian" group, while the modern Austronesian-speaking majority population does not, or only marginally show evidence for admixture, and cluster closely with otherEast/Southeast Asian people.[173][174] There were also immigrations fromAustroasiatic,Papuan, andSouth Asian peoples.[175]
The majority population of Filipinos areAustronesians, a linguistic and genetic group whose historical ties lay inMaritime Southeast Asia and southern East Asia, but through ancient migrations can be found as indigenous peoples stretching as far east as thePacific Islands and as far west asMadagascar off the coast of Africa.[176][177] The current predominant theory on Austronesian expansion holds that Austronesians settled the Philippine islands through successive southward and eastward seaborne migrations from theNeolithicAustronesian populations of Taiwan.[178]
The results of a massive DNA study conducted by theNational Geographic's, "The Genographic Project", based ongenetic testings of 80,000 Filipino people by the National Geographic in 2008–2009, found that the average Filipino's genes are around 53% Southeast Asia and Oceania, 36% East Asian, 5% Southern European, 3% South Asian and 2% Native American.[184]
According to a genetic study done by theKaiser Permanente (KP) Research Program on Genes, Environment, and Health (RPGEH), most self-identified Filipinos sampled, have "modest" amounts of European ancestry consistent with older admixture.[185]
Dental morphology provides clues to prehistoric migration patterns of the Philippines, with Sinodont dental patterns occurring in East Asia, Central Asia, North Asia, and the Americas. Sundadont patterns occur in Southeast Asia as well as the bulk of Oceania.[186] Filipinos exhibitSundadonty,[186][187] and are regarded as having a more generalised dental morphology and having a longer ancestry than its offspring, Sinodonty.
Published in 1849, TheCatalogo Alfabetico de Apellidos contains 141 pages of surnames with both Spanish and Hispanicized indigenous roots.
Authored by Spanish Governor-General Narciso Claveria y Zaldua and Domingo Abella, the catalog was created in response to the Decree of November 21, 1849, which gave every Filipino a surname from the book. The decree in the Philippines was created to fulfill a Spanish colonial decree that sought to address colonial subjects who did not have a last name. This explains why most Filipinos share the same surnames as many Hispanics today, without having Spanish ancestry.
Augustinian Friar, Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga, in the 1800s, measured varying ratios of Spanish-Mestizos as percentages of the populations of the various provinces, with ranges such as: 19.5% of the population of Tondo (The most populous province), to Pampanga (13.7%), Cavite (13%) and Bulacan (10.8%) to as low as 5% in Cebu, and non-existent in the isolated provinces.[144][145] Overall the whole Philippines, even including the provinces with no Spanish settlement, as summed up, the average percentage of Spanish Filipino tributes amount to 5% of the total population.[144][145] The book, "Intercolonial Intimacies Relinking Latin/o America to the Philippines, 1898–1964 By Paula C. Park" citing "Forzados y reclutas: los criollos novohispanos en Asia (1756-1808)" gave the number of later Mexican soldier-immigrants to the Philippines, pegging the number at 35,000 immigrants in the 1700s,[188] in a Philippine population which was only around 1.5 Million,[189] thus the Latin Americans formed 2.33% of the population.[190]
In relation to this, a population survey conducted by German ethnographerFedor Jagor concluded that 1/3rd of Luzon which holds half of the Philippines' population had varying degrees of Spanish and Mexican ancestry.[191]
Recent studies during 2015, record around 220,000 to 600,000 American citizens living in the country.[193] There are also 250,000Amerasians acrossAngeles City, Manila,Clark andOlongapo.[194]
The indigenous (native) Philippine languages spoken around the country that have the largest number of speakers in a particular region with Tagalog being the largest. Note that on regions marked with black diamonds, the language with the most speakers denotes a minority of the population.
Austronesian languages have been spoken in the Philippines for thousands of years. According to a 2014 study by Mark Donohue of theAustralian National University and Tim Denham ofMonash University, there is no linguistic evidence for an orderly north-to-south dispersal of the Austronesian languages from Taiwan through the Philippines and into Island Southeast Asia (ISEA).[181] Many adopted words fromSanskrit and Tamil were incorporated during the strong wave ofIndian (Hindu-Buddhist) cultural influence starting from the 5th century BC, in common with its Southeast Asian neighbors. Chinese languages were also commonly spoken among the traders of the archipelago. However, with the advent of Islam,Arabic andPersian soon came to supplant Sanskrit and Tamil as holy languages. Starting in the second half of the 16th century, Spanish was the official language of the country for the more than three centuries that the islands were governed throughMexico City on behalf of the Spanish Empire. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Spanish was the preferred language amongIlustrados and educated Filipinos in general. Significant disagreements exist, however, on the extentSpanish use beyond that. It has been argued that the Philippines were less hispanized thanCanaries andAmerica, with Spanish only being adopted by the ruling class involved in civil and judicial administration and culture. Spanish was the language of only approximately ten percent of the Philippine population when Spanish rule ended in 1898.[195] As a lingua franca or creole language of Filipinos, major languages of the country likeChavacano,Cebuano,Tagalog,Kapampangan,Pangasinan,Bikol,Hiligaynon,Waray-Waray, andIlocano assimilated many different words and expressions from Castilian Spanish.
In sharp contrast, another view is that the ratio of the population which spoke Spanish as theirmother tongue in the last decade of Spanish rule was 10% or 14%.[197] An additional 60% is said to have spoken Spanish as a second language until World War II, but this is also disputed as to whether this percentage spoke "kitchen Spanish", which was used as marketplace lingua compared to those who were actual fluent Spanish speakers.[197]
In 1863 a Spanish decree introduceduniversal education, creating free public schooling in Spanish, yet it was never implemented, even before the advent of American annexation.[198] It was also the language of thePhilippine Revolution, and the 1899Malolos Constitution proclaimed it as the "official language" of theFirst Philippine Republic, albeit a temporary official language. Spanish continued to be the predominantlingua franca used in the islands by the elite class before and during the American colonial regime. Following the American occupation of the Philippines and the imposition ofEnglish, the overall use of Spanish declined gradually, especially after the 1940s.
However, there has been a resurgence of these ancient scripts, and initiatives to push the government for standardization. The most prominent script, Baybayin, is a writing system native to the Philippines, with the word ‘baybay’ meaning “to spell” in Tagalog (Bielenberg, 2018). Due to Spanish colonization, this script was replaced with the Latin alphabet which became the standard of the Philippines. In recent times, there has been a large interest in revitalizing Baybayin, with scholars spreading awareness and education online, and artists interpreting this script into their work.[204]
The second largest religion in the country isIslam, estimated in 2014[update] to account for 5% to 8% of the population.[207]Islam in the Philippines is mostly concentrated in southwesternMindanao and theSulu Archipelago which, though part of the Philippines, are very close to the neighboringIslamic countries ofMalaysia andIndonesia. The Muslims call themselvesMoros, aSpanish word that refers to theMoors (albeit the two groups have little cultural connection other than Islam).
Historically, ancient Filipinos held animist religions that were influenced byHinduism andBuddhism, which were brought by traders from neighbouring Asian states. Theseindigenous Philippine folk religions continue to be present among the populace, with some communities, such as theAeta,Igorot, andLumad, having some strong adherents and some who mix beliefs originating from the indigenous religions with beliefs from Christianity or Islam.[208][209]
There are currently more than 10 million Filipinos who live overseas. Filipinos form a minority ethnic group in the Americas, Europe, Oceania,[211][212] the Middle East, and other regions of the world.
There are an estimated four millionAmericans of Filipino ancestry in the United States, and more than 300,000 American citizens in the Philippines.[213] According to the U.S. Census Bureau, immigrants from the Philippines made up the second largest group after Mexico that soughtfamily reunification.[214]
^Including others such as Latin-Americans and Chinese-Mestizos, pure Chinese paid tribute but were not Philippine citizens as they were transients who returned to China, and Spaniards were exempt
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^"Filipino".Online Etymology Dictionary.Archived from the original on August 12, 2012. RetrievedFebruary 3, 2014.
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^Cruz, Elfren S. (July 29, 2018)."From indio to Filipino".PhilStar Global.Archived from the original on December 11, 2020. RetrievedNovember 30, 2020.
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^Larousse, William (2001).A local church living for dialogue: Muslim-Christian relations in Mindanao-Sulu (Philippines), 1965–2000. Ed. Pont. Univ. Gregoriana. pp. 221–222.ISBN978-88-7652-879-8.OCLC615447903.
^Aguilar, Filomeno V. (November 2012). "Manilamen and seafaring: engaging the maritime world beyond the Spanish realm".Journal of Global History.7 (3):364–388.doi:10.1017/S1740022812000241.
^Holt, Thomas Cleveland; Green, Laurie B.; Wilson, Charles Reagan (October 21, 2013)."Pacific Worlds and the South".The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Race.24: 120.ISBN978-1-4696-0724-5.Archived from the original on February 18, 2023. RetrievedNovember 30, 2020.
^Huerta, Felix, de (1865).Estado Geografico, Topografico, Estadistico, Historico-Religioso de la Santa y Apostolica Provincia de San Gregorio Magno. Binondo: Imprenta de M. Sanchez y Compañia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Remains of ancient barangays in many parts of Iloilo testify to the antiquity and richness of these pre-colonial settlements. Pre-Hispanic burial grounds are found in many towns of Iloilo. These burial grounds contained antique porcelain burial jars and coffins made of hard wood, where the dead were put to rest with abundance of gold, crystal beads, Chinese potteries, and golden masks. These Philippine national treasures are sheltered in Museo de Iloilo and in the collections of many Ilongo old families. Early Spanish colonizers took note of the ancient civilizations in Iloilo and their organized social structure ruled by nobilities. In the late 16th century, Fray Gaspar de San Agustin in his chronicles about the ancient settlements in Panay says: "También fundó convento el Padre Fray Martin de Rada en Araut- que ahora se llama el convento de Dumangas- con la advocación de nuestro Padre San Agustín ... Está fundado este pueblo casi a los fines del río de Halaur, que naciendo en unos altos montes en el centro de esta isla (Panay) ... Es el pueblo muy hermoso, ameno y muy lleno de palmares de cocos. Antiguamente era el emporio y corte de la más lucidanobleza de toda aquella isla." Gaspar de San Agustin, O.S.A.,Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas (1565–1615), Manuel Merino, O.S.A., ed., Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas: Madrid 1975, pp. 374–375.
^Volume 5Archived October 10, 2017, at theWayback Machine of A study of the Eastern and Western Oceans (Japanese:東西洋考) mentions that Luzon first sent tribute to Yongle Emperor in 1406.
^Stephanie Mawson, 'Between Loyalty and Disobedience: The Limits of Spanish Domination in the Seventeenth Century Pacific' (Univ. of Sydney M.Phil. thesis, 2014), appendix 3.
^Peasants, Servants, and Sojourners: Itinerant Asians in Colonial New Spain, 1571-1720 By Furlong, Matthew J.Archived April 29, 2022, at theWayback Machine "Slaves purchased by the indigenous elites, Spanish and Hokkiens of the colony seemed drawn most often from South Asia, particularly Bengal and South India, and less so, from other sources, such as East Africa, Brunei, Makassar, and Java..." Chapter 2 "Rural Ethnic Diversity" Page 164 (Translated from: "Inmaculada Alva Rodríguez, Vida municipal en Manila (siglos xvi-xvii) (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 1997), 31, 35-36."
^VIIème Congrès d'Etudes Basques = Eusko Ikaskuntzaren VII. Kongresua = VII Congreso de Estudios Vascos. Donostia [San Sebastián]: Eusko Ikaskuntza. 2003.ISBN84-8419-917-7.OCLC60787017.
^Rodao, Florentino. "The Spanish Community in the Philippines, 1935–1939".Department of Area Studies, the University of Tokyo.
^Gambe, Annabelle (2000).Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurship and Capitalist Development in Southeast Asia. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 33.ISBN978-0-312-23496-6.
^abFolk, Brian (2003).Ethnic Business: Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia. Routledge. p. 93.ISBN978-1-138-81107-2.
^Peasants, Servants, and Sojourners: Itinerant Asians in Colonial New Spain, 1571–1720 By Furlong, Matthew J.Archived April 29, 2022, at theWayback Machine "Slaves purchased by the indigenous elites, Spanish and Hokkiens of the colony seemed drawn most often from South Asia, particularly Bengal and South India, and less so, from other sources, such as East Africa, Brunei, Makassar, and Java..." Chapter 2 "Rural Ethnic Diversity" Page 164 (Translated from: "Inmaculada Alva Rodríguez, Vida municipal en Manila (siglos xvi–xvii) (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 1997), 31, 35–36."
^ab"Intercolonial Intimacies Relinking Latin/o America to the Philippines, 1898–1964 Paula C. Park" Page 100
^Doeppers, Daniel F. (1994). "Tracing the Decline of the Mestizo Categories in Philippine Life in the Late 19th Century".Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society.22 (2): 82.JSTOR29792149.
^Steinberg, David Joel (2018). "Chapter – 3 A Singular and a Plural Folk".The Philippines A Singular and a Plural Place. Routledge. p. 47.doi:10.4324/9780429494383.ISBN978-0-8133-3755-5.Archived from the original on February 18, 2023. RetrievedJuly 22, 2021.The cultural identity of the mestizos was challenged as they became increasingly aware that they were true members of neither the indio nor the Chinese community. Increasingly powerful but adrift, they linked with the Spanish mestizos, who were also being challenged because after the Latin American revolutions broke the Spanish Empire, many of the settlers from the New World, Caucasian Creoles born in Mexico or Peru, became suspect in the eyes of the Iberian Spanish. The Spanish Empire had lost its universality.
^Tracing the Decline of the Mestizo Categories in Philippine Life in the Late 19th Century By Daniel F. Doeppers)
^Article 3 ofthe treatyArchived July 8, 2012, at theWayback Machine specifically associated the $20 million payment with the transfer of the Philippines.
^Nolasco, Clarita T. (September 1970)."The Creoles in Spanish Philippines".Far Eastern University Journal.15 (1 & 2).Archived from the original on February 18, 2023. RetrievedDecember 6, 2021.
^WHITE, LYNN T. III (2018).PHILIPPINE POLITICS: possibilities and problems in a localist democracy. ROUTLEDGE. pp. 18–19.ISBN978-1-138-49233-2.OCLC1013594469.
^abMark Donohue; Tim Denham (2010). "Farming and Language in Island Southeast Asia".Current Anthropology.51 (2):223–256.doi:10.1086/650991.S2CID4815693.
^Yambazi Banda (2015)."Characterizing Race/Ethnicity and Genetic Ancestry for 100,000 Subjects in the Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging (GERA) Cohort".Genetics.200 (4):1285–1295.doi:10.1534/genetics.115.178616.PMC4574246.PMID26092716. Subsection: (Discussion) "For the non-Hispanic white individuals, we see a broad spectrum of genetic ancestry ranging from northern Europe to southern Europe and the Middle East. Within that large group, with the exception of Ashkenazi Jews, we see little evidence of distinct clusters. This is consistent with considerable exogamy within this group. By comparison, we do see structure in the East Asian population, correlated with nationality, reflecting continuing endogamy for these nationalities and also recent immigration. On the other hand, we did observe a substantial number of individuals who are admixed between East Asian and European ancestry, reflecting ~10% of all those reporting East Asian race/ethnicity. The majority of these reflected individuals with one East Asian and one European parent or one East Asian and three European grandparents. In addition, we noted that for self-reported Filipinos, a substantial proportion have modest levels of European genetic ancestry reflecting older admixture."
^George Richard Scott; Christy G. Turner (2000).The Anthropology of Modern Human Teeth: Dental Morphology and Its Variation in Recent Human Populations. Cambridge University Press. pp. 177,179,283-284.ISBN978-0-521-78453-5.
^"Intercolonial Intimacies Relinking Latin/o America to the Philippines, 1898–1964 Paula C. Park" Page 100
^Cooper, Matthew (November 15, 2013)."Why the Philippines Is America's Forgotten Colony".National Journal.Archived from the original on February 18, 2015. RetrievedJanuary 28, 2015.c. At the same time, person-to-person contacts are widespread: Some 600,000 Americans live in the Philippines and there are 3 million Filipino-Americans, many of whom are devoting themselves to typhoon relief.
^abGómez Rivera, Guillermo (2005)."Estadisticas: El idioma español en Filipinas".Archived from the original on August 24, 2013. RetrievedMay 2, 2010. "Los censos norteamericanos de 1903 y 1905, dicen de soslayo que los Hispano-hablantes de este archipiélago nunca han rebasado, en su número, a más del diez por ciento (10%) de la población durante la última década de los mil ochocientos (1800s). Esto quiere decir que900,000 Filipinos, el diez porciento de los dados nueve millones citados por el Fray Manuel Arellano Remondo,tenían al idioma español como su primera y única lengua." (Emphasis added.) The same author writes: "Por otro lado, unos recientes estudios por el Dr. Rafael Rodríguez Ponga señalan, sin embargo, que los Filipinos de habla española, al liquidarse la presencia peninsular en este archipiélago, llegaban alcatorce (14%) por ciento de la población de la década 1891–1900. Es decir, el 14% de una población de nueve millones (9,000,000), que serían un millón (1,260,000) y dos cientos sesenta mil de Filipinos queeran primordialmente de habla hispana. (Vea Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, enero de 2003)". (La persecución del uso oficial del idioma español en FilipinasArchived January 18, 2017, at theWayback Machine. Retrieved July 8, 2010.)
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^Philippines.2013 Report on International Religious Freedom (Report). United States Department of State. July 28, 2014. SECTION I. RELIGIOUS DEMOGRAPHY.Archived from the original on May 26, 2019. RetrievedMay 22, 2019.The 2000 survey states that Islam is the largest minority religion, constituting approximately 5 percent of the population. A 2012 estimate by the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos (NCMF), however, states that there are 10.7 million Muslims, which is approximately 11 percent of the total population.
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