A lthough Filipinos have many concerns, it’s a safe bet that for most people “my country is named after a 16th-century Spanish prince” is among the least of them. But it’s an issue that seems to bother President Rodrigo Duterte . In a typical rambling rant on February 11, he suddenly blurted out that he favoured an old proposal to change the country’s name to “Republic of Maharlika”. He said the country had really been stuck with the name “Philippines” by Spanish colonisers (he erroneously named Magellan, calling him a “fool” to boot) who were honouring Philip II. Duterte was reigniting a debate that has at best been lacklustre and is seen by plenty of people as completely unnecessary. The country got its name in 1544, after a Spanish explorer decided to name the archipelago after the prince of Spain, Philip II (who would go on to become the king who sent the ill-fated Armada against England). The colony was originally called “Las Islas Felipinas”, which was corrupted to “Filipinas” and eventually translated into “Philippines” or “Pilipinas”. Duterte channels late dictator Marcos by calling for Philippines’ name to be changed “I don’t think [a change] is called for at this time, what can you achieve by changing the name? We’re already known as the Philippines,” said historian Ricardo Jose, director of the University of the Philippines Third World Studies Centre. The issue is also politically toxic: the name “Maharlika” is a dictator’s fantasy. The main proponent of the name change was the late, murderous dictator Ferdinand Marcos. On February 11, Duterte said: “Marcos was right, he wanted to change [the country’s name] to the Republic of Maharlika, because maharlika is a Malay word and it means more of a concept of serenity and peace.” That isn’t how Marcos saw it. He was obsessed with the term, a pre-colonial word with Sanskrit roots that originally denoted “freeman” but he warped to mean “nobleman”. According to historian Jose, “I think he wanted nobility, to him it meant the noble ones – it’s a vision of an illusory past, we never had a nobility in that sense.” Duterte’s proposal to change Philippines’ name highlights vexed history of place nomenclature When Spanish explorers arrived in the 1500s, the archipelago was a vast collection of disunited small settlements, speaking different languages and each ruled by a strongman dominating several classes of inhabitants. One such class was the maharlika. After the second world war, Marcos claimed he led an anti-Japanese guerilla group he called “Ang Mga Maharlika” (the nobles) and attempted to collect both medals and US veterans’ benefits for the band. Investigating historians and the US military concluded the group was bogus and fraudulent. This didn’t stop Marcos from insisting he was a war hero and when he declared martial law in 1972, he used his dictatorial powers to bestow “Maharlika” on everything from a government propaganda broadcast company to a palace hall and highway. His tame parliament discussed an initiative to rename the country “Maharlika”, but nothing came of it. A noted historian, Zeus Salazar, told This Week in Asia that Marcos’ attempt to rename the country was part of the “revolution from the centre” espoused by the dictator’s regime. “It was a tendency then for new countries of Asia and Africa to rename themselves as a reaction to Western imperialism.” He said though that “Maharlika” didn’t really mean “noble” or “aristocrat”: “It’s from the Sanskrit word maharddhika , which means rich or wealthy”. But one of Marcos’ close associates turned whistle-blower said the word fed into Marcos’ dictatorial ambitions. Journalist Primitivo Mijares broke with the dictator and wrote a tell-all book, Conjugal Dictatorship , that may have cost him his life. He wrote that although Marcos claimed to have declared martial law to save the republic, he really planned to set up a “royal dictatorship” based on “unequal castes” derived from pre-colonial times. Mijares predicted that Marcos would organise Philippine society so that there would be a class of royalty (Marcos and his wife Imelda) lording it over warriors, freemen (his cronies, the Maharlika) and slaves ( alipin ). Duterte is the Putin of Asia. Maria Ressa is the proof Marcos’ dictatorship, which jailed, tortured and murdered thousands of Filipinos and plundered some US$10 billion, ended in 1986 when the dictator and his family were chased out of the country by a “People Power” revolt. Duterte has made no secret of his admiration of the dead dictator and recently, in the face of piles of evidence gathered over three decades, said there was no evidence the dictator and his family had amassed ill-gotten wealth. Salazar offered several reasons Duterte might be revisiting Marcos’ renaming effort. “First, he is a bad imitation of Marcos; second he can’t do anything except what comes to his mind as a lunatic; third, he wants to distract the public’s attention from the problems of his administration; fourth maybe he thinks this will enhance the chances of his candidates in the coming election.” On March 3, Duterte seemed to backtrack from the Marcos plan, when he gave a speech saying “I want to change it [the country’s name] in the future. No particular name yet, but I would like to change the name … because Philippines is named after King Philip.” For the historian Salazar, “the name of the Philippines can no longer be changed – Marcos could not do it, much less Duterte, who is nowhere near Marcos in ability”. “The identity of the Filipino is formed and is attached to the name of his country, the Philippines. The change could have been done during the revolutionary period [in the late 1800s] but it’s too late now, the country has been using the name for nearly 500 years,” the historian said. To the Catholic Church, Duterte is a modern-day Henry VIII That hasn’t stopped a few Filipinos from expressing discontent with the name. There have been a few proposals – “Luzviminda”, a concoction based on the first few letters of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, the country’s three main island groups; and “Rizalia” after the national hero Jose Rizal. But maharlika has a resonance for one group – the country’s Muslims. According to professor Julkipli Wadi, former dean of the Institute of Islamic Studies of the University of the Philippines: “ Mahardika , in the understanding of the south, means freedom and independence … in fact among the Maguindanaos it is pronounced meredika , among the Tausug, it’s mahardika , among the Malaysians and Indonesians, merdeka .” Wadi said “there will always be some kind of question mark in our struggle for nationhood unless and until we go really deep into questioning our identity”. He said, “I think Duterte has a point, but I don’t necessarily follow the Marcos proposal.” Proponents of maharlika have another problem: a viral story on social media that the word literally translates to “big male organ”. Professor Wadi said he had read that story on Facebook, but “I don’t know if that’s real or what, I really didn’t give it importance”. ■