I teach Phillippine history in a American community college and I flinch everytime a bright-eyed student would refer about his/her or recent trip to P.I. with their parents.  P.I., of course means Philippine Islands and to most Filipinos familiar with U.S. colonialism of the Philippines, it is a politically incorrect term. That much I learned from my U.P. history professor Dr. Oscar Alfonso. P.I. as a term is specific to the Philippines as U.S. territory, a colonial one, until the U.S. Congress granted Philippine independence in 1945. Similarly, the use of Phillipino, for Filipino, soundz like a tad of ignorance of Filipino history. The use of P.I. is an innocent mistake given that Philippine Islands is a direct translation of Islas Filipinas in Spanish,  the name Spanish explorer Legaspi in 1543 gave to the group of islands (Leyte and Samar) in honor of the Felipe II, king of Spain. Spanish Philippines has been called hence, with Manila as its center. Subsequent European travelers to the Philippines either called it by its Spanish name, Las Islas de Filipinas or simply Manila. An 18th century Italian map named the country, Isole Filipino, complete with drawings of an Italianate coastline. In other words, the European world saw the Philippines as the eastern-most extension of the the Hispanic/European culture. British travelers recognized the Philiippine islands but considered only Manila and Cavite as the core of Hispanic society, a jewel of Asia, the pearl of the Orient. British occupied it for two years as a prize for defeating Spain in the Seven Years War only to find out that the alleged wealth of Manila was in the galleon trade. It made the Spanish residents wealthy but left the natives no better than subsistence living. In fact, the Philippines existed in the imaginary of Europe as only as the origin of the Manila-Acapulco trade. Mexicans of Nueva Espana ignored Manila altogether and called the trade Nao de China (Ship from China).  Even then, Spanish Fiipinas was effectively concentrated only in the coastal populations of Manila-Cavite, Ilokos, Cebu-Iloilo and Zamboanga.

During the Propanganda Movement and the Katipunan Revolution, to remove the odious label of “indio”- the term the Spanish reserved for the natives, the necessity to re-identify the Philippines became foremost in the minds of its leaders. While acknowledging the geography of the Philippine archipelago, what to call the multiplicity of linguistic cultures that existed then was problematic. Rizal’s contemporaries, ilustrados and scholars toyed with the idea of a Tagalog civilization. Bonifacio ultimately declared the Katipunan as the revolt of the bayan katagalugan, the nation of many peoples in the Philippine archipelago.  Aguinaldo upped the idea of a nation by declaring the independence of the Republica Filipina. Republic of the Philippines or R.P. eventually became the international identity of the independent Philippines.

Unfortunately, the life of the Aguinaldo’s R.P. was short lived. Against the imperialist ambition of the U.S. at the turn of the century, the Philippines was recast as another political entity within the realm of American Pacific. H.I. or Hawaii was annexed as well as P.R. Puerto Rico. The Philippines followed suit as P.I. Even as Aguinaldo was battling the U.S. Army during the Philippine American War (1899-1913), commercial and military communication already signed off their correspondence as P.I. – Philippine Islands. Official correspondence would be signed from the Benguet, Mt. Province, P.I. to Davao, Moro Province, P.I. Vivid markers of this colonial identity are found in coinage, in emblems and paper currency. Then President McKinley, it is said, prayed on his knees about what to do with the Philippines. In a moment of enlightenment he ordered the War Department map-maker to include the Philippines in the U.S. map. More than just demarking an outpost of American imperial reach, the use of P.I. specially the designation “Islands”, in its plurality fitted well in the colonial discourse of the time. Islands (pl.) connote lack of territorial unity and by extension, common identity. American colonial leaders were one in saying that the Philippines was a confusing jumble of “races” (Negritos, Malays, etc.) and languages that a unifying colonial administration was necessary to manage the country.

Independent Philippines continued the naming protocol set by Aguinaldo – Republika ng Filipinas. After 1946, reference to P.I. in official documents diminished. The country joined the United Nations as The Philippines, without the Islands. The Philippines is perhaps one of the few nations that still carry its colonially ascribed name (former Rhodesia in Africa , New Zealand, Micronesia come to mind). There have been proposals to change its name but without success. Rizalia (after Jose Rizal), Luviminda (Luzon-Visayas-Mindanao), Ma-i (Chinese name for Mindoro, but let’s be careful lest the Chinese claim it their territory) or, Maharlika (nobility, but it also means potent-male-organ in Malay). I guess our leaders gave up the idea of a name change because it was too complicated and intellectually challenging.  Or perhaps we need to change the society first before we can rename it.

Using the term “P.I.” today expresses a colonial status  for an independent nation. Without the background knowledge of its historical usage, it might be forgiven as an absence of historical acuity but to persist in using it uncritically, is an unconscious acknowledgement of the Philippine’s colonial status. It would otherwise be Politically Incorrect.