Naming the People of the Philippines

From James Scott's Seeing Like a State:

Filipinos were instructed by a decree of November 21, 1849, to take on permanent Hispanic surnames. The author of the decree was Governor Narciso Claveria y Zaldua, a meticulous administrator as determined to rationalize names as he had been determined to rationalize existing law, provincial boundaries, and the calendar. He had observed, as his decree states, that Filipinos generally lacked individual surnames, which might “distinguish them by families,” and their practice of adopting baptismal names drawn from a small group of saints’ names resulted in great “confusion.” The remedy was the catalogo, a compendium not only of personal names but also of nouns and adjectives drawn from flora, fauna, minerals, geography, and the arts and intended to be used by the authorities in assigning permanent, inherited surnames. Each local official was to be given a supply of surnames sufficient for his jurisdiction, “taking care the the distribution be made by letters [of the alphabet].” In practice, each town was given a number of pages from the alphabetized catalogo, producing whole towns with surnamed beginning with the same letter. In situations where there has been little in-migration in the past 150 years, the traces of this administrative exercise are still perfectly visible across the landscape: “For example, in the Bikol region, the entire alphabet is laid out like a garland over the provinces of Albay, Sorsogon, and Catanduanes which in 1849 belonged to the single jurisdiction of Albay. Beginning with A at the provincial capital, the letters B and C mark the town along the coast beyond Tabasco to Tiwi. We return and trace along the coast of Sorsogon the letters E to L; then starting down the Iraya Valley at Daraga with M, we stop with S to Polangui and Libon, and finish the alphabet with a quick tour around the island Catanduanes.”

Also on wikipedia.