Ethnologists have always embraced the lexical interpretation that MAN in Manobo or MAN-obo refers to ‘people.’ The same goes to MAN-daya and MAN-saka whose prefix is said to come from the same root word.
Curiously, the Manobo, Mansaka, Mandaya, and Bagobo dictionaries do not have an entry for MAN, not even as a prefix, which is odd given the popular acceptance of the term. Instead, we have the word OTAW, the equivalent of Visayan ‘tawo.’
The Chinese annals known as Ming shih written during the Ming Dynasty (1385-1644), at about the time the Dutch traders were visiting the gulf of Davao, may provide some explanation.
In the Proto-Indo-European root, ‘man’ is not a prefix but a suffix, which means ‘male.’ On the other hand, in Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, ‘man’ is similarly spelled but pronounced as ‘meng.’
It is interesting to note that MAN, supposedly translated as ‘people,’ is only attached to the names of Davao tribes and nothing else! The tribes of Luzon such as the Ifugao, Bontoc, Kankanay, Ibaloi, Kalinga, Tinguian, Isneg, Gaddang, Ilongot and Negrito, do not carry the prefix.
Even the ethnologists, who study different societies and cultures, do not provide us a convincing conjugation of why ‘man’ indubitably refers to people or a population of people.
Berthold Laufer, in ‘The Relations of the Chinese to the Philippine Islands,’ part of the 1908 Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, states that “the annals of the provinces of Kuang-tung and Fukien frequently speak of the Philippines, and describe historical and other incidents related to them, for the natural reason that the traders and seafaring people of those parts of China were most active in transmarine undertakings.”
Chinese junks during this period are known to sail to Maguindanao to trade but were deceived after they were supplied “a party of impure wax and half-rotten tobacco,” leaving them no option but to accept the goods under threat of getting nothing. They could also have been deceived in the gulf of Davao, then controlled by Maguindanao vassals, where they also operated.
In the same chronicles, the Chinese referred to the Spaniards as ‘man’ by using a derogatory term originally referring to the aborigines of southern China, which means ‘savages.’ Could it be that ‘man’ as a prefix is an offshoot of the bad experiences the Chinese meet while in Mindanao?
But, why is the prefix not used for the Maguindanao people? There may be a hypothetical explanation for this that it was also used for that tribe, which some scientists studying the origins of the tribe say was once part of the Manobo but renamed itself or adopted another identity after the establishment of the sultanate in 1520 in honor of the lakes that surrounded their kingdom.
Speaking of lakes, the Meranao people also got their name after the lagoon and the provinces that host them, the Lanaos. Linguistically and culturally, they are related to the Tiruray and Subanon.
Meanwhile, we are often told that the word MAMA, as in Datu Mama Bago, comes from the Maguindanao language. Oddly enough, there is no reference to it in the 1803 ‘Diccionario Moro-Maguindanao-Español’ by Fr. Jacinto Juanmarti, S.J.
In other dictionaries, ‘mama’ is referred to as ‘brother,’ a term of address exclusive to males and used by men only. In the Bagobo lexicon, ‘Diccionario Bagobo-Español’ by Fr. Mateo Gisbert, SJ, it is defined as ‘man,’ which is a sexual sorting.
Maybe the linguists have a way of resolving the etymology of ‘man’ in reference to tribal names which, up to now, is dependent on the interpretation of experts. If the term cannot be found in old, colonial dictionaries, finding it in today’s lexicons may be more challenging.
