Villages Named After Manobo People

According to Defending the Land, a study on ancestral domain claims, place-names in Kulaman were often derived from the names of Manobo people. Below are some of them. Note that a barangay is a village and a sitio is a slightly remote and well-populated district within a barangay.

• Barangy Lagubang was named after the oldest resident of the area.
• Barangay Kapatagan was named after the wife of Lagubang.
• Barangay Nati got its name from the first known leader of the community. Nati died in a flood that occurred before the Spanish colonized the Philippines in the 1500s.
• Sitio Bagsing of Barangay Gapok got its name from the first datu of the place.
• Sitio Todog of Barangay Bugso was named after a hunter from Barangay Malegdeg who slept under a large tree and never woke up.
• Barangay Sewod took its name from a well-known and respected datu.
• Barangay Langgal was named after the third wife of Datu Sewod.
• Barangay Kadi was named after the fourth wife of Datu Sewod.
• Barangay Kulaman, of course, was named after a famous seventeenth-century sultan.

Kulaman (official name: Senator Ninoy Aquino) is composed of twenty barangays, all of which have Manobo names. This is one proof of the claim of the Dulangan Manobo that Kulaman Plateau is their ancestral domain.

What I find interesting in the list are the ones named after women. Traditionally, Manobo women were owned by their husbands, so to speak. The dowry system forced them to live almost like slaves once married. I wonder how Kapatagan, Langgal, and Kadi were able to have such a status as to have a territory named after them. They might have been great beauties, or they might have been good leaders, the first empowered Manobo women.