WHENCE CAME THE NAME “BALANGIGA”?

 

By Msgr Lope C. Robredillo

 

One of the frequently asked questions in local history is the origin of the town’s name.  In Eastern Samar, some towns have an unbroken tradition about their names, like Borongan, which came from the word “borong,” meaning, fog.  No one in Borongan disputes this; none of the Boronganons is aware of any other etymology of the name of the place.  But this is not the case of Balangiga.  It seems that, until now, people have not found a satisfactory explanation for the origin of its name.

          To date, there are four explanations, the first two of which I found in the Municipality of Balangiga Home Page in the internet.  [1] The first one comes from a legend.  According to the website, the legend is “about a hallow jackfruit called 'Balanga' floating in the nearby river. The fruit kept on coming back until picked up by a fisherman who threw it with much anger upon seeing it without the juicy stuff inside. The spot where the fruit landed came to be known as Balanga and which through the years became what it is now: Balangiga."  In historical studies, we call this “aetiological legend,” a story is created to explain the origin of the name of the place.

 

          [2] The second is quite complicated; it speaks of a theory that Balangiga is a combination of three monosyllabic words: bala from balay (house) in Ilocano and Samareño; ngi- from ngi-ngi which means mouth; and ga, a derivative from the Samareño word duungan or port in English. Thus Bala-ngi-ga means “house at the mouth of the port” or port town.  Though the meaning is beautiful, the derivation is so artificial that one doubts whether the pre-Hispanic natives of Balangiga could have attained such a degree of sophistication.  The other problem is that it cannot be linked to any record or artifact to support the derivation.  In fact, it does not have any precedent in the Samareño tradition in the naming of towns and other places.  One, though, is reminded of a practice among Samareños especially in the 1990s to name their children from the combination of the names of their parents, e.g., Tessthur, from Maritess and Arthur.

 

          [3] A third explanation, suggested before but lost to the present generation of Balangiganons, is that the town was originally called Balanguigui, the name of the place of the founder of Balangiga.  According to the story, his name was Manginginsilao, a Moro sultan from Mindanao, who, having been driven by his brother after the death of their father, took refuge in this place, together with his Christian captives.  He allegedly founded the town in 1665.  While it is true that there is such an island in Mindanao known as Balanguigui, which was home to Moro pirates, one cannot subscribe to it without encountering a number of inconsistencies and historical problems.  It is more likely that the one who created this explanation must have read about this island in a book of history, because this was well known during the Spanish time, and then associated it with the origins of Balangiga.  The story, in other words, is probably also an invention.

 

          [4] The fourth one, the newest, I found in a Spanish book; but its derivation is simple.  The town of Balangiga was named after a tree called Balangigan.  Says Matheo Sanchez in his book, Vocabulario de la Lengua Bisaya, published in 1711: “Balangigan: Cierto arbol, y 

deste arbol se de nomina el Pueblo llamado Balangigan” (p.51).   The advantage of this explanation is that there is no transformation or adaptation in the word; Spanish books and reports in the 1700s called this town BALANGIGAN OR BALANGUIGAN.  Moreover, it is consistent with the tradition of pre-Hispanic natives of this island to name places after trees, e.g., Lauaan, Dao, Talisay, Burac, Malobago, Dapdap, etc.  The derivation does not seem to have been invented.