The Philippines were named after a Spanish king, King Phillip, or Felippe in Spanish. Given that the country was first controlled by the Spanish for ages, then the Americans, I'm guessing that at first the Spanish name for both the people and the territory was used, but when the Americans took over, the English-ified name of the territory was used, while the Spanish name for the people stuck as colonial powers use the name for the territory more often? Perhaps the Filipino diaspora also plays a role in this. I don't know, just my guess.
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2026
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Phuck if I know.
Who nos!?
And is pronounced "Pilipino" by most Filipinos. But my Filipino wife, who grew up in South Carolina, had a friend who said "Flippin-o". So that's what we say now, lol.
"Flippin-o" sounds like if a kids show tried to create a fake curse word, so they could curse on air, without being fined by the FCC.
It's all a bunch of smoo!
That's not because of the spelling but because of the language. Just like Indonesian, the language doesn't distinguish between f and p, because they're basically the same letter (one is a plosive and one is a fricative but that's it). In Indonesian you'll hear fancake and coppee, for example.
I knew a Pilipino family that seemed to pronounce it both ways.
I tend to think it’s due to those around them. Like this kid I knew from school who came from the UK; with us as his friends, he had an American accent like the rest of us. But as soon as he talked to his parents or his sister, he had this heavy English accent. He seemed to be aware of it but had no control over it.
English, misspelling and never admitting mistakes go hand in hand.
Don't forget 'far too inconvenient to correct now'
I had no idea either but I did find this while Googling(Kagi-ing?)
https://grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/04/why-is-filipino-spelled-with-an-f.html
Back in my day we used to call it "searching"
Here's a Nintendo game. It's Halo for the Xbox360.
People that use Kagi are the Harvard grads of search engine users
You could easily replace 'googling' to 'Interneting'.
Instead of googling, I say searching it up
'Interneting' does not suggest using a search engine
If “Googling” falls into common usage to cover all web search, Alphabet lose their trademark protection…
"Kleenex" being more common than "facial tissue" is not hurting the Kleenex brand at all.
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Because the English language is rife with tradition that makes the language intentionally more complicated.
I have postulated for years that you can just get rid of ph from the language entirely and it will make absolutely no difference in how we say the words.
Hey Filipino here - i honestly don't know the answer (or maybe I'm too old to remember my history class) but as per Wikipedia
The name Filipino, as a demonym, was derived from the term las Islas Filipinas 'the Philippine Islands', the name given to the archipelago in 1543 by the Spanish explorer and Dominican priest Ruy López de Villalobos, in honor of Philip II of Spain.
it was an Spanish colony for 300 years, Filipino is the Spanish spelling, and probably stuck, in English would have been "Philippine"
I always remember the 'pp' by imagining it as some suburban estate. "Philip Pines"
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How did this question never occur to me before? Now i need to know the answer too
Lol
Guangzhou is spelled with the Pinyin
But the local language is not called "Guangzhouese", its Cantonese, but the city is not called "Canton"
lmao
Also: Petition to rename my city to "Filadelfia" 🤭
Canton was originally the transliterated name for the province of Guangdong, which is why the language is called Cantonese in English, from guǎngdōnghuà.
The name Canton being applied to Guangzhou came later.
Why is Kansas, "cansus", while Arkansas is "R-cansaw"?
America explain!
Kansas is named for the Kaw People Native American Nation (or Kanza) and Arkansas is named for the Quapaw Nation. Algonquian-speaking people originally referred to the Quapaw as "Akansa". French fur traders called them Arcansas.
I grew up in Kansas and we called it Ar-kansas.
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I have a relative in NJ who says Arkansas like Kansas with the hard S. He says it's a local thing but I think he's just trying to be different.
That's what I learned to call it growing up in Kansas.
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Two things: Competing colonial interests and the orthographic differences between Spanish and English
The Spanish Empire took control of the Philippines and named the named the islands Las Islas Filipinas or just Las Filipinas which is still today used in Spanish to this day. It was named for the Spanish king at the time of the conquest: Rey Felipe II. Why the change from FE-lipe to FI-lipinas? I don't know.
Towards the end of the 1800s, The Spanish Empire is crumbling and their last remaining territories (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and Las Filipinas) is taken by the USA. The US changes the name to the English-inflected The Philippines because English for, some reason, uses to two "F" sounds: "F" and "PH." Spanish only has one: "F."
My issue with gif and graphical
They're the same G.
J-spot
Gotta buy a new JPU for better Jrafix
Aint nothin but a J thang baby
Actually, the G in GPU stands for Giraffe. Hardware has gotten quite sophisticated over the years, and are no longer optimized for rendering triangles. If you can render a giraffe you can render anything.
Gotta say, pronouncing it as /dʒɪf/ is just top tier trolling. Everyone knows that /ɡɪf/ is the only one that actually makes sense, but some people intentionally choose to pronouns it wrong anyway. Steve Wilhite saw an opportunity to leave his mark on the world by trolling the hell out of everything, so he took it. Who could resist an opportunity like that.
Just remind yourself that the pronunciation of an acronym is completely unrelated to the pronunciation of the component words.
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