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By Go Bon Juan
Editor’s Note: The Sixth Dr. Jose P. Rizal
Awards for Excellence awarding ceremony will be held on June 14,
2008, 7 p.m., at the Kaisa-Angelo King Heritage Center on Anda and
Cabildo Streets, Intramuros, Manila.
Two places in Panay appeared in early
17th-century Chinese records: Hamtic and Ogtong.
According to the newly published English
translation of Fr. Juan Fernandez, OSA’s Monografias de los
Pueblos de la Isla de Pan-ay (Monographs of the Towns of Panay by
Jose G. Espina Jr., Iloilo: San Agustin Publishing House, 2006), a
Royal Order of 1796 formed the province of Antique with the capital
Hamtic. In 1802 by another Royal Order, it was transformed into San
Jose de Buenavista. The name Antique is a “castilianized” name;
the Visayan name of Hamtic is derived from the name of a big ant
that bites painfully.
When one looks at the map of Panay today, one
can still find a municipality, Hamtik, in the provincial capital of
San Jose de Buenavista. But I don’t think people are familiar with
the place named Hamtik anymore, nor the fact that it was the
original name of Antique province as well as its original capital.
But in the ancient Chinese geography classic on
Southeast Asia, Dong Xi Yang Kao of 1618, it mentioned a place
called Ham Tiak in Hokkien, which was said to be after Mamburao and
Ilin island of Mindoro. Both were along the navigation route passing
through the Philippines. Ham Tiak, no doubt referred to Hamtik in
Panay.
This is a good example that showed the names of
the places in the Philippines, which appeared in ancient Chinese
records, were most likely to have been the original names.
Another interesting item, Dong Xi Yang Kao
mentioned yet another place in Panay, pronounced Oktong in Hokkien.
This was the original name of a town named Oton in Iloilo province,
which is near Iloilo City.
Like a nose
As for Iloilo, the name for both province and
the city, the local Chinese still write of and refer to Iloilo as
Ilong in Hokkien—which was exactly its original name.
In the same monograph, Fr. Fernandez said,
“The word ‘Iloilo’ is castilianized. The real name is
Ilong-Ilong, which in the Visayan language means a thing similar to
a nose. This name was given to the islet that forms the Batiano
estuary, which enters right where the small house of the Practicos
is built and goes out to the sea near the church of Ogtong. The
natives also used to call this islet Catalman, which in Visayan
means a pointed thing. Now it is named Iloilo…” So in Panay, we
have at least three good examples of Chinese names of places that
are related to their original names.
Another example worth mentioning here is Cebu.
Until now, local Chinese write and call Cebu pronounced as Sok Bu in
Hokkien. This was again the original name of Cebu, which was “Sugbu,”
meaning wave.
The Chinese names of these places clearly
indicate how close the relationships were between Chinese and
Filipinos, and how far back they went in history.
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