On naming places after people

By Gideon Lasco

Two of last year’s developments inspired this piece: the proposal to rename Ninoy Aquino International
Airport after Ferdinand E. Marcos (House Bill 610), and the proposal to name a state university in Ilocos
Norte, likewise after the late dictator (House Bill 2407).

Such moves are clear acts of congressional obsequiousness, and they are nothing new. We are paying
Congress to come up with ideas and bills to change the country for the better - and while some lawmakers
rise to the challenge, many others are content to indulge with such trivialities. I hope our economists cal -
culate how much time, and taxpayer’s money is wasted on naming and renaming places, from roads and
bridges to schools and even entire municipalities.

What is even more scandalous is the fact that some of them, not content to waste their position this way,
have the shamelessness to name those places (and entire geographic areas) after themselves, their family
members, and patrons, in effect serving as the ultimate form of epal-ness. On a recent 100-km bike ride
around Taal Lake, for instance, I saw various school buildings named after local politicians.

On one level, we can debate whether Marcos or Aquino deserve the honor of having different places
named after them. We can also criticize Congress for dwelling on nomenclature, as I have done above.
But we can take this issue to a deeper level and ask ourselves: Must we name places after people in power?

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In the past, people named places based on the inherent characteristics of the place itself, not in honor of
other people. Thus, Manila comes from “may-nilà”, meaning “where indigo is found”; Iloilo is suppos-
edly derived from irong-irong - “like a nose” - to describe the shape of Iloilo River. Lipa, for its part, is
said to be named after the poisonous wood nettle (Dendrocnide meyeniana) that I try to avoid in my
hikes.

Perhaps the act of naming a place after something that is external to the place itself began with coloniza -
tion, and the earliest examples in the Philippines include Ferdinand Magellan’s “Las Islas de San Lázaro”
to Ruy López de Villalobos’ “Las Islas Felipinas”. Eventually, many places in the country became up for
grabs as a way to honor various sinners and saints - including places that we don’t even know are named
after a person, like Marikina and Alaminos (both the city in Pangasinan and the town in Laguna), all of
which are named after Spanish Governor Generals.

Which is to say that there is something colonial about the naming of places after something that is extrin-
sic to it. To name a place is to displace the primacy of its inherent character in giving meaning to it, and
in doing so, colonize its very identity; to rename it is to deny the significance of a culture with which it
was, or is, intimately linked.

Consequently, renaming a place has decolonizing potential. This is the reason why countries have
changed their names and Marcos himself, in an act of self-serving nationalism, tried to rename Filipinas
to a term that, regardless of its precolonial significance, haunts us today: Maharlika.

We need to recover the names, whenever available, of places, to remind ourselves of what once was and
what can be. Can we not have more streets that pay tribute to our cultural, biological, and historical diver-
sity? The children’s writer Candy Gourlay once told me that “we should put up a statue of a rhinoceros in
Manila to remind ourselves that such an animal once roamed in Luzon.” Short of such an intriguing sug-
gestion - one I heartily endorse - might names also help revive bygone eras in our consciousness?
Of course, we should continue to honor people by naming places after them - and this is especially for
new constructions - airports, subway stations, dedicated bike lanes and walkways. But they should honor
not just political figures (or rich people who can donate enough money to get entire colleges or institutes
named after themselves) but people from all walks of life.

For this reason, instead of politicians, the naming of places should involve academics and artists like Re-
sil Mojares, Kidlat Tahimik, Virgilio Almario, Ponciano Bennagen, Mary Racelis, Fernando Zialcita, as
well as people with deep local knowledge like Bae Inatlawan of Bukidnon; Kristian Cordero of Naga, and
Ian Casocot of Dumaguete, as well as indigenous and other local communities.

With enough sense of historical justice, we may yet find ourselves in Macli-ing Dulag Highway or Kian
Delos Santos Avenue.