Names of the Philippines

There have been several names of the Philippines (Filipino: Pilipinas, [pɪlɪˈpinɐs]; Spanish: Filipinas) in different cultures and at different times, usually in reference to specific island groups within the current archipelago.

Mindanao, which they reached first and assumed to be the greater land, they named after the reigning emperor Charles V, who was also Spain's king Carlos I.

The present name of the Philippines was bestowed by the Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos[1][2] or one of his captains Bernardo de la Torre[3][4] in 1543, during an expedition intended to establish greater Spanish control at the western end of the division of the world established between Spain and Portugal by the treaties of Tordesillas and Zaragoza.

[10] In the 1930s, the scholar Lope K. Santos introduced the abakada alphabet for writing Tagalog which no longer used the letter F as this sound was absent and was usually pronounced by speakers of several Philippine languages as "P".

The abakada alphabet also subsequently spread to other Philippine languages (which had been using spelling systems based on the Spanish abecedario).

[11] The Commission on the Filipino Language and National Artist, Virgilio S. Almario urged the usage of Filipinas as the country's official name to reflect its origin and history,[12] and to be inclusive of all languages in the country of which phonologies contain /f/, represented by the grapheme F in the present-day Philippine alphabet.

Tierra adorada, hija del sol de Oriente, su fuego ardiente en ti latiendo está.

[48] A holistically government-backed name has yet to be determined,[49] although a pan-Malay word reflecting the nation's island identity has been proposed as more appropriate, or one related to the archipelago's pre-Hispanic excellence in sailing and boat-building.