Lagalag at lagablog

When did we start making things so complicated?

I remember when I was young, I used to see a lot of Sampaloc trees lining up the alley behind our house. It made a lot of sense to me when I found out while eavesdropping on conversations of elders that we live in a place called Sampalucan. It didn’t made much sense though that the city where we live in is called Caloocan as I knew from school that look is a gulf but I didn’t see any body of water except for a little estero in Maypajo and in Laon Laan which, incidentally, is no longer there now. Not until I heard stories from my mama and titas that beyond the Libis Gochico and Libis Asistio to our west, you can already view the bay or the looc, hence the name Caloocan. Libis, of course, is a very apt name as it is difficult to descend these streets for being very steep.

Another thing that perplexed me in my youth is a large tract of land less than a kilometer away to the west of our house called Dagat-dagatan. It was perplexing because, as I mentioned earlier, I didn’t see any sea anywhere near our house. Apparently, the whole area used to be fishponds which extended all the way out into the looc. Now the streets of Dagat-dagatan, now Kaunlaran Village, are named after fishes such as bangus, talakitok, tamban and other kinds of fishes I’ve never even laid eyes on. It will come as no surprise if these fishes become extinct, as their former abode has been.

My curious mind thus began to survey the area around: further north in Malabon is a barangay called Acacia, probably called as such after the acacia trees abundant in the area. I suppose Tugatog to the north west was called as such because it was nestled on a hill in one of the higher areas of Malabon, just before the descent towards the palaisdaan or fish ponds. The name Tugatog has long become as misnomer since Madame Imeldific covered up the entire Dagat-dagatan area as her NHA project, thereby obstructing the normal flow of water from the elevated areas to the lower lying areas, and paving the way to the annual floodfest in Malabon, not sparing even Tugatog. I came across a map from Manila, My Manila by Nick Joaquin which shows that the entire area from Navotas (called as such as the area seems to be nabutas, as it was practically submerged in water off the coast of Malabon and Caloocan) to Bocaue, Bulacan subsisted on fishing. Up to now, even if fishponds have been greatly reduced in number, the Navotas Fish Port is still the place to be to source fresh seafood from the Manila Bay or harvested from fishponds in Navotas, Malabon and all the way up north to Bocaue.

Going back to our neighborhood, taking after the abundance of Sampaloc trees in our area, the last few trees of which I still sighted before the great fire of December 18, 1983, I figured that the nearby Maypajo was called as such because the area was abundant with trees called Pajo. I can hazard a guess that it is the same for Maysilo in Malabon but I don’t know if silo is a kind of plant or the area used to be a habitat of wild animals, hence the installation of traps of silo to catch prey. Now, the area called Maysilo hosts the Malabon Zoo in Governor Pascual Avenue in a district where streets are named after fruit-bearing trees. So I guess, may silo would still be apt afterall.

Could Baclaran not be a conjoined word for Lakaran ng Bakla but a reference to the baklads or fish cages in nearby Manila Bay? It could very well be, as I remember seeing a very famous photograph of 1968 Miss Universe Gloria Diaz, a native of Parañaque, clad in en vogue bathing suit, parading by her hometown’s then equally famous beach, way before the terrifying reclamation of Manila Bay.

Back then, who needs road markers and huge welcoming arcs, such as the one in Paniqui, Tarlac, when all you need to do is simply look around and you’ll know where you are? (Incidentally, I wonder if that town is named as such for being rife with bat colonies…)

It is interesting to note where the names of neighboring cities of Mandaluyong and Makati were taken from. As a child, I used to think the Makati area used to be ant infested as its people were probably always itchy, hence the name makati. But what about Mandaluyong? It was only upon reading one of Ambeth Ocampo’s books that I found out why: Makati and Mandaluyong were called as such to describe the action of the Pasig River traversing between them. On the side of Makati, the water is calm and free-flowing hence, more boats can dock on its side --- the katian side. On the other hand, the river is turbulent and rapid on the side of Mandaluyong --- hence, people describe this side as madaluyong. Further down the river near its outlet to the Manila Bay, the river banks are adorned with the wild flowering grass called nilad, thus the name Maynilad which was further abbreviated into Maynila. Further down south you will find Tanauan, Batangas which was named as such when the Taal Lake still opened up to the sea and the town of Tanauan housed a reliable tower to keep watch of bandits from the South China Sea. The original location of Tanauan has long since been submerged under the waters of the lake after one of the volcano’s more violent eruptions closed the gulf off from the sea.

The thing is, these places were not named, they were called. The difference lies in the deliberateness of ascribing a name to a place. People who needed directions back then were pointed to an area where a certain characteristic, physical, geographical or topographical, stands out. Surely, one would not miss Sampalucan as the trees’ branches studded with oblong shaped, small, tightly arranged leaves with brown lumpy fruits wave at you from afar. Thus, the name becomes attached to a particular place for obvious reasons --- res ipsa loquitur, and later on by tradition as villagers pass on by word of mouth how a place is called. As local people would ask, “ano nga ang tawag sa lugar na ito?� loosely translated as “what is this place called?�

Aside from the environmental or topographical characteristics of the place, towns which are habituated and lie outside the wilderness were given names in reference to landmarks. Hence, Arkong Bato, Biak-na-Bato, Pasong Tirad and so on. Obviously, centuries of colonization did not go as far as renaming everything in our midst with the survival of the old names of towns (the use of the Spanish alphabet, notwithstanding) as evidence.

(As an aside to the use of the Spanish spelling, local politicians were in a rift over what should be the official spelling of “Caloocan� City. In 1993, along with the change of leadership from the Asistios to Malonzo, the name Caloocan was changed to Kalookan just when the Department of Education (then DECS) adopted the “Bagong Alpabetong Filipino� to incorporate the Spanish influence in our language and thus, making the use of “c� in Caloocan proper. Actually, I’m really not sure now whether we were Caloocan first of Kalookan…)

People call names out of habit until the etymology of the name is lost. Up to now, a place near the boundary of Malabon and Valenzuela is still called BBB, short for Balintawak Beer Brewery, now the San Miguel Polo Brewery, even if nobody seems to remember what BBB stands for. Of course, San Miguel is “San Miguel� because its first brewery was named “San Miguel Brewery� for obvious reasons --- it was located in the San Miguel district in Manila.

While the art of calling a place used to be motivated by facility of use, it has been devolved into the hands of those in power who has since renamed the places not out of wit but of pomp. By law, names of municipal or city roads are changed by the municipal or city council in the blink of an eye; same goes for the changing of the names of provincial roads by the sangguniang panlalawigan, and the national roads by Congress. Way back in the American occupation, homesick Americans named the entire Cubao and Ermita districts after American states hence, we had New York, Nevada, Virginia, Maryland, Detroit, Chicago in Cubao and Dakota in the old rich district of Ermita. Of course, these streets have long been renamed by authorities to honor other personalities, much to the consternation of confused constituents who one day woke up to find themselves on a “different� street. Well, vestiges of more homesick Mexicans in the Philippines during the Spanish period are still to be found at present with the towns of Pampanga named after Spanish colonies in North and Central America, such as Mexico, Florida(blanca), and Angeles City (after El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de la Porciuncula a.k.a. Los Angeles, California).

Culture and society are intertwined with language. The phenomenon of environment-based nomenclature is not exclusive to the Tagalog language. Other languages also employ a simple method of using nouns, sentence construction, and even numerical system. The Chinese written language, for example uses pictographs which originally were visual representations of the idea represented. One only has to look at the Chinese character for China to illustrate this statement: Zhong which means middle is represented by a horizontally placed rectangle, vertically traversed in the middle by a straight line; while guo which represents the idea “land� resembles a fortress, an area enclosed by a fence with a flagpole flying a flag inside. Filipinos, who are not only visual but auditory as well, have onomatopoeic words to describe the rain (tikatik ng ulan), water (lagaslas ng tubig), thunder (dagundong ng kulog), footsteps (yabag) and even one’s fall (lagabog).

Things are not as simple now. It seems that the more we try to simplify things, the more complex - and senseless - things have become. A top view of the San-Juan-Quezon City-Pasig area will not yield a view of greens while looking down on Greenhills, Greenmeadows, Greenpark, and Valle Verde; not blue while looking down Blue Ridge. What would we do without street signs, often stolen or defaced by either greedy or deranged people? Maybe we should rename Epifanio de los Santos Avenue as Smog or CO Avenue and nobody would have to ask why. At least, Wack-wack probably still has some historical or auditory significance which I will try to find out... could it be descriptive of the incessant, whacking sound made by the flapping of nocturnal wings?