Spanish influence on Filipino culture

Among Asian countries, the Philippines have a particular charasteristic, in that unlike its regional neighbours, the Culture of the Philippines have deeply rooted Hispanic characteristics.

History

Main article: History of the Philippines

From 1521 to 1781, the Philippines were administered as a colony of New Spain (Mexico).

In the past years the Philippines has also began to establish closer ties to its other former colonizer, Spain. The King and Queen of Spain attended the Centenial celebration of Philippine Independence from Spain on June 12, 1998 in recognition of a shared colonial history and cultural ties.

Language

Main article: Spanish in the Philippines

The Spanish language was the Philippines' only official language during the 377 years in which it was under Spanish and Mexican colonial rule. It was spoken primarly by the colonial administration and the Spanish-mestizo minority, but also by the few educated natives, the Ilustrados, who were instructed in the language and used it as their adopted primary language.

Even though the majority of the population continued speaking any of the various native languages, most Filipino languages have been greatly impacted by Spanish with generous quantities of loan words in their inventories. Currently, Pilipino (based on Tagalog) is the official language of the Philippines (along with English) and estimates place the words that Tagalog and Cebuano derivated from Spanish at between 4,000 to 8,000.

Since the end of colonial rule the use of Spanish has been in dire decline. It ceased to be an official language in 1973 and according to the 1990 Census of the Philippines; Spanish is now spoken by less than 0.01% of the population, 2,658 speakers.

People

One of the more obvious marks left by Spanish rule in the Philippines is a prevalence of Hispanic names and surnames among many, if not most, christianized Filipinos. One aspect of this unusual naming custom is that it is much in contrast to those of other Asian peoples where names are commonly associated to their historic languages and related to their regions of residence. Another interesting aspect of this naming custom is that, unlike the peoples of the Hispanic world, among Filipinos a Spanish surname does not indicate Spanish ancestry.

On November 21, 1849 Governor General Narciso Clavería ordered a systematic distribution of family names for the natives to use. The "Catálogo alfabético de apellidos" [Alphabetic Catalogue of Surnames] was produced collecting names from Spain and approved names were assigned to families in all towns. Name distribution was so systematic that civil servants assigned family names in alphabetical order causing some small towns with only a few families to end up with all names starting with the same letter. This interesting situation has remained until fairly recent times when people became more mobile and started seeking mates from other towns.

The colonial authorities implemented this decree mainly because many early christianized Filipinos named themselves after the saints so much so that it caused consternation among the Spanish authorities. Apparently, christianization worked much too well that there were soon too many people surnamed Santos, San José, San Antonio, and San Buenaventura, difficulting the administration efforts. Another unacceptable custom was that siblings took on different last names like they had always done before the Spaniards came. All these "problems" resulted in a less efficient system of collecting taxes.

With the Calveria Decree, the Spanish colonial administration compelled every male head of familiy to choose a surname from the list. Those who lived in more remote areas, and were not subjugated, escaped this fate. Many people in the mountain areas of Luzon, Mindanao, Mindoro, Palawan, and other places retained their way of life, their culture, and their way of naming themselves.

The Filipino experience could more accurately be compared to the naming history of Black slaves in the early history of the USA. The commonality between Filipinos and African Americans is that both possess surnames that were not bequeathed through ancestry; the Filipinos were handed one from a list of surnames, while Black slaves either took on the surname of their slaveowner or a surname was assigned to them, surnames which have since been handed down the generations to this day.

Another result of the Hispanization of Filipino names was the change in the way traditional names were pronounced. Since Hispanic names were just sounds that didn't mean much, names like "Dimalantá" became "Dimalanta" with the accent shifting to the penultimate syllable, and "Julag-ay" became "Júlagay" with the accent shifting from the penultimate to the first and the glottal catch disappearing. This tended to hide the meanings of the names and made them more of an abstract entity just like Hispanic names. At the same time, the new pronunciation sounded more Hispanic and this step completed the transformation of some families, at least in their own minds, to an ersatz class of pseudo-Spaniards. It is for this reason that many Filipino surnames cannot be found among the peoples of the Hispanic world, as many of these surnames are merely Hispanic in sound.

Many famous people from the Phillipines have Hispanic-sounding names, such are the cases of former Presidents Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda, former world boxing champions Frank Cedeno and Gabriel Elorde, writers Mayo Rectofic, José Rizal and Pedro Paterno, as well as others.

Catholic religion

Main article: Religion in the Philippines Catholicism is the mainstream religion.

Fiestas and religious holidays

Roman Catholic holidays are official holidays.

Arts, Literature and Music

The musical group Menudo and Mexican singer/actress Thalía made albums in Tagalog during the mid-1980s and early 1990s respectively, using their first language, Spanish, as a base to record their Tagalog albums for their Filipino audience.

Clothes

Business

A minority of companies in the Philippines have kept their original Spanish names. Most, however, now use Filipino language names as a result of the decline of the Spanish language in the country.

Filipino's reactions

Many Filipinos feel they are part of two - mostly different - cultures put together. While Filipinos identify racially as Asians, and rightly so, they still acknoweledge that the Hispanic influence forms an important part of their national history and culture, thus a part of whom they are.