So, what’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, according to Shakespeare. But then, a rose is different from panamao or biliran, two old words whose root meanings have been lost to most native speakers of the Visayan language.

We shall attempt to clarify the origin of these two words that had been reduced to mere place-names, both of which had been used to identify the island north of Leyte that has the shape of an inverted heart.

Panamao is the former name of the island that is now Biliran, the youngest province in Eastern Visayas.

The word panamao was described as a fishing net in an old Visayan dictionary, the Vocabulario de la Lengua Bisaya, compiled by a Jesuit priest, Mateo Sanchez, in Dagami town in Leyte, in 1615-1617.

Of course, there are various types of fishing nets, each named according to their use or function. For instance, pukot is the general term for nets that catch fish by their gill. Baling is specific to the bag net which is spread along the sea near the beach and entraps fish inside a bag-like compartment after its two ends are pulled toward dry land by fishing teams.

Panamao is presently pronounced as “pa-na-maw,” but it is possible that this word was originally pronounced “pan-amaw.” Panamao might have been a net specifically intended to catch a type of fish species called amaw (i.e., naive or stupid). If the round shape of Mount Panamao has some resemblance at all to the original net, then this fishing instrument might have been a wide-mouthed and shallower version of the present sibot (dip net).

Modern Visayans have a hard time identifying various species of fish or even differentiating tulingan (bonito) from tangigue (tuna).

Some native fish names have also given way to Spanish names, or even Tagalog ones. Certainly, former President Corazon Aquino’s galunggong is known as hasa-hasa in the Visayas.

Amaw appears to be the same fish now known as tonto (i.e., Spanish for stupid) in fancy restaurants. This large fleshy fish makes good and delicious sinugba (broiled fish). Tonto is known to be a tame fish, not very hard to catch. It is said that they often swim about in pairs. When one of a pair is caught, the other becomes easy to catch. In human logic, the amaw fish must be tonto (stupid) indeed to be so easily caught.

The meaning of the word biliran underwent a lot of sea change since its mention in an entry in the Sanchez dictionary. The more famous meaning of the word came from the late Justice Norberto Romualdez around the turn of the previous century.

Romualdez had theorized that the name Biliran was derived from a grass called “borobiliran.” This misleading theory continues to be propagated by recent publications.

Sanchez originally defined the word bilir as follows: “also biliran or bildan. Corner or edge of a boat, vase or anything protruding, like veins, or the furrow made by the plow.”

The definition strongly suggests that biliran referred to the hull at the bottom of a boat, which produces “furrows” on the water when in motion.

Coincidentally, the former Panamao Island was the site of the first large-scale Spanish shipyard in the Philippines from the 1580s to the early 1600s. The reference to the galleons built on the island might have been the basis for the name-change to Biliran Island in later decades, probably starting around the 1680s.

The change of names from Panamao to Biliran was possibly influenced by the catastrophic eruption of the Panamao Volcano around 1669. The natives probably decided the name-change on the belief that this would waylay the bad spirits in the destructive volcano.

So, what's in panamao and biliran? A lot, in terms of history and culture. From a fishing net to a part of a boat, both words now lead us to people, the present inhabitants of Biliran Province.

The Biliranons could now make sense of the lost meanings of panamao and biliran. With a fuller knowledge and understanding of this aspect of their identity, they could help figure out a hopeful future for their province.

home