The question on where does the term âIlocosââthe basis of my proposed contemporary rendering of âIlokanoâ to mean both the people and their languageâcome from had doggedly resulted in some confusion on the part of the Ilokanos themselves and scholars and cultural researchers.
In my search for the origin of the word, I have come across a variety of interpretations and the more popular ones are: (a) the riu-kiu/ryu-kiu/liukiu theory that refers to the Ilocos as the âisland adjacent to the Mainlandâ, with this Mainland presumably referring to China; and (b) the usual culprits, the Spaniards, who, in their ignorance, and then the equal ignorance of those whom they asked what the place they were in was and the response was the word âlooc/lookâ which meant the cove; the usual Spanish interpretation of the lay of the Ilocos land, the lay revealing a riverine system which has its roots in âilocâ, a Tagalog word for river, âilogâ, with the terminal contoid âgâ beyond the pronunciation ability of the Spaniards, hence, its phonetic rendering into âilocâ, from which it came the glorious name, âIlocosâ.
Theory (a) was popularized by Resurreccion Calip when in 1957 he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Epic of Lam-ang for the University of Santo Tomas , âThe Iloko EpicâLam-ang: A Critico-Anthropological Analysis.â In his treatise, Calip came across the possibility that âIlokosâ could have come from âI-riu-kiuâ and its other renderings based on some characters. He argued that since the Ilokanos have had long history of contact with the Chinese traders, the existence of such characters in the Chinese accounts prove the fact that the Ilokos could have been thought of as part of the idea of a China as a huge land, a huge kingdom with islands adjacent to it.
In 1958, George Kerr came up with his study of the Okinawan people, âOkinawa, the History of an Island People.â In this book, he talks about the Ryukyus or the Ryukyu Islands, now known by its new Japanese name Okinawa, although in the earlier times, Okinawa was merely a part of the Kingdom of Ryukyu.
Kerr talks of the characters that could be rendered in several ways, mainly Japanese and Chinese but transliterated by historical sources from the West as well: âRyukyuâ for the Japanese and âLiu Châiuâ for the Chinese. The Western transliterations, one of which was used by the United States in its treaty it entered into with that kingdom in 1854, âCompact between the United States and the Kingdom of Lewchew,â are numerous: âReoo Keoo,â âLikiwu,â âLiquii,â âLiquea,â and âLeung-Khieou.â And an Okinawan dialect, Kerr reports, had also rendered it âDoo Choo.â
From this Kerr account, the Calip interpretation now self-destructs: it is not the Ilokos being referred to but the Kingdom of Ryukyu which is now administratively known in Japan , as Okinawa . Another point that makes the Calip account a mere wild guess and therefore, does not admit of urgency and immediacy of ownershipâand hence, invalidâis the fact that when a people name themselves, would they get their nameâtheir very identity from some other extraneous, outside, strange source and use that to account who they are, or were, as was the case of the early Ilokanos?
This then brings us to the point of the whole scale account of Spanish ignorance of the Ilokano people and who they are. We must remember at this point that the colonial project of the Spaniardsâa project blessed by a Vatican pope, through a bull, no lessâwas not simply an innocent act of âannouncingâ the Good News to the heathens, the pagans, the unbaptized, and the uncivilized, categories that the West used to prop up their claim of having gotten a message from their white God, and that this white God was commanding them to go to other nations and make them nations of Christianity. We must remember that when the Spanish colonizer came, he brought along with him two kinds of sinister foot soldiers: one kind, to show his earthly might and power through the gun-toting mercenaries; and the other, the soldier of the faith, the bible-wielding know-it-all soutaned messenger of salvation who had the power to baptize in the name of the white God they brought with them.
No, we cannot accept the Calip account and neither can we accept the ignorance of the Spanish chroniclers.
This leaves us with no other option except to figure out from what we have got: to understand, on the basis of our own language, on the basis of our own unique history, on the basis of our ecology, on the basis of our own self-understanding of our world and our relationships. In short, we need to go back to the tradition of giving a name to our land, to our homes, to ourselves. Before the coming of the colonizers, we were named in so many ways, one of which was through the acknowledgement of the kind of virtue and gift and promise and talent we could offer, in oblation, to our communities. This is why Calip missed the point altogether when he missed the clue that Lam-ang, himself, named himself, and that he did not need other people to name him.
From the traces of the term âIlokoâ, we can truly break it down into simpler parts: the prefix âiâ, meaning from, and the root, âlokoâ, which by the virtue of some linguistic transposition, could refer to âlokong,â the lowland, the low point of the law of the land. This is a most plausible account in many ways: (a) the intercultural and transcommunal relationship between the upland peoples and the lowlanders, with the linguistic clue on the upland, now Cordillerans, another one of those misnomers courtesy of the Spaniards: Igorot or Igorot can be broken down into: âiâ, to mean âfromâ, and âgorot/golotâ, to mean mountain.
We must understand that in those times, as it is now, people are defined by their places, by their origins, by their ancestral beginningsâin effect, by the very land that sustains them. That itself serves as the main marker for self-identity and the kind of dynamic that is involved in it. From that linguistic sleuthing comes a broad view of a cosmos that the Ilokano and the Igorot people shared since time immemorial: that the Ilokanos were people of the âlukong,â the slopes, the plains, the places that lead to the sea and that the Igorots were people of the hills, the mountains, the uplands and that these references are as tentative as the movement of the âamiananâ windâthat wind that brings in all the freshness of the sea, the rain, the fecundity of both the earth of these two peoples who are two only by reason of their residential accidents but not two in the end but one because they share a life-giving nexus, a living connexion with each other, an intersection of their lives in language, rites, rituals, technology, stories, and knowledge in general.
The Epic of Lam-ang is itself a living proof: Lam-ang was an Ilokano because he came from the âlukongâ but Ines Kannoyan was an Igorot because she came from the âgulot/gulodâ. The beautiful but tragic life and love of Diego Silang and Gabriela Silang is another proof: Diego was from the âlukongâ, Gabriela was from the uplands.
The lesson we learn from here is simple: we name ourselves and we do not allow others to do that to us. That, I think, is contrary to our âpanagbuniagâ tradition, with our reference to the god Buni. This is why we acknowledge progress with the allusion to the god of progress, Lung-aw, which is why we say, âNakalung-aw met bassiten, apo!âWe have already progressed a bit, my lord!â This is why we do the âayabâââUmaykan, umaykan, dika agbatbati!â This is why we do the âsirok-ti-latokâ, the ritual of naming under a platter.
It is this resisting the naming by other that spells the difference between self-redemption that we can do to ourselves and the kind of redemption that colonizers offer us for a fee: our very souls, our very lands, our very names, our very richesâin short, ourselves and who we are.
In short, the Ilokano is plain and simple âtaga-lukong.â Indeed, âilukongâ.
(To be continued)