"The" Philippines

[Michael McKernan]

sally o. donlon wrote:

>As a kid I always wondered why we said Hawaii for the Hawaiian Islands,
>but not Phillipi for the Phillipine Islands.


Sally's youthful attempt to apply her understanding of the 'rules' of
English  helps to expose some layers of complexity beyond the simple
accuracy of Jonathan Lighter's

>Short for "the Philippine Islands."

Place names imposed by colonial 'powers' are a curious mixture of 'native'
names

-The Hawaiian islands,(as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong) named
after the 'big island' of Hawai'i.  (if this approach had been used for
what are now the Phillipines, then the country might now be the Luzon
Islands, or simply, Luzon.)

And non-native names:

-The Phillipine Islands, named by Spanish imperialists as las Islas
Filipinas, after Felipe II, King of Spain.  The English, who have an
interesting habit of anglicizing some foreign personal or place names, but
not others), in this case (I believe) already had 'Phillip' as the English
equivalent of Felipe, so these islands came to be anglicized as the
'Phillipine Islands', a form which generally requires the definite article,
because of its plural structure and I suppose, the fact that one could be
referring to several of the thousands of Phillipine Islands, while not
intending to refer to the whole shebang, if one said 'Phillipine Islands,'
omitting the definite article.

Note that Filipino/a people, even in anglophone countries like the USA,
insist on using the Spanish-derived term to refer to themselves, rather
that something  anglicized,like 'Phillipino'.

If the English had named the Phillipines after a Phillip of their own, they
might have done the same thing (i.e., the Phillipine Islands, or perhaps
the Phillipian Islands), but they might also have chosen something like
'Phillipsland'.  Naming after kings has been a problem for the English (and
other Europeans), since kings go by first names, and it doesn't sound right
to say the Phillip Islands, the way it does to say 'the Cook Islands'
(after Cap. Cook).  So there seems to be a rule hanging around somewhere
concerning how to transform first names, vs. last names, in such situations.

Michael McKernan