Iloilo (Part 2 of… still undetermined)
“Iloilo Doesn’t Mean Cleaning the Rear End”
It has always been a puzzle for me why Iloilo was called as such. For people in the Central Visayas, at least for a Cebuano/Bisaya-speaking person like me, “Iloilo” would sound funny. “Ilo” in my hometown means the act of cleaning up after defecating. (A funny translation of Iloilo would be “Wash your poopoo twice” just kidding) As a child my grandpa made a fool out of me by explaining that people in Iloilo are very clean individuals (which is true by the way according to how I see it in the way they keep their city clean) that they always wash their “lubot” (ass) from time to time.
It was the wise Mr. Nick Mana-ay, a colleague at the office who eventually explained to me the etymology of the word Iloilo. My good friend google and Wikipedia helped too! Here’s what I found out from them:
Hispanicized corruption of irong-irong, Hiligaynon for “nose-like,” referring to the shape of the delta formed by what are now called theIloilo and Salog Rivers on which the settlement of the same name thrived. The name originally only applied to the town (now city) of Iloilo (rendered in Spanish orthography as Yloylo or Yloilo), which serves as the capital of the province.
Lame excuse. It had to take almost 9 years before I got a perfect explanation of the etymology of the word. haha
