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Bayan (political entity)


In early Philippine history, a Bayan (sometimes simply called a "large Barangay") was a political entity which consisted of several social groups called "Barangay (Filipino plural: mga Barangay)." The term's etymology can be traced back to the word "bahayan", meaning a "community", or literally "a place with many households." The majority of these early "bayan" were economically complex communities situated river deltas where rivers exit out into the ocean, and featured a compact community layout which distinguished them from inland communities, thus the name.

After the various polities of the Philippine archipelago were united into a single political entity during colonial times, the term gradually lost its original specific meaning, and took on more generic, descriptive denotations: population center (poblacion) or capital (cabisera); municipality; or in the broadest sense, "country".

Among the most prominent of these Bayan entities were those in Maynila, Tondo, Pangasinan, Cebu, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, and Sulu.

Grace Odal-Devora traces the etymology of the term "Bayan" to the word "bahayan," meaning a "community", or literally "a place with many households (bahay)." She notes that its root word, "Ba-y" or "Ba-i", is linguistically related to other Philippine words for shoreline and perimeter (both "baybay"), woman ("babai" or the Visayan term "ba-i" meaning great lady), friend (the Visayan term "bay"), and writing (baybayin). She also notes that these terms are the basis for many place-names in the Philippines, such as Bay, Laguna and Laguna de Bay, and Baybay, Leyte.

The earliest documentation of the term "Bayan" was done by early Spanish missionaries who came up with local language dictionaries to facilitate the conversion of the peoples of the Philippine archipelago to Roman Catholicism. Among the most significant of these dictionaries was the Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala by the Augustinian missionary Fray Pedro de San Buenaventura, who described it as a large town with four to ten datu lived with their followers, called dulohan or barangay.


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