Chapter 2
Felipinas
Mindanao, Sarangani and Samar
The Philippines were named by Ruy López de Villalobos’s expedition from Mexico. In 1543 his men called Samar and Leyte the Felipinas, after Prince Felipe of Spain, later King Felipe II, and under Legazpi the name came to mean the whole archipelago.
Who named the Philippines?
The name comes from the expedition of Ruy López de Villalobos, sent from Mexico in 1542. In 1543 his men called Samar and Leyte “Felipinas”, after Felipe, the sixteen-year-old heir to the Spanish throne, who became King Felipe II in 1556. From Legazpi’s time, in the 1560s, the name was used for the whole archipelago.
Late 1542
Fifteen years after Saavedra, Spain tries again from Mexico. The viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, sends Ruy López de Villalobos with six ships and about 370 men. They take their oaths at the little port of Navidad, on the Pacific coast, in October 1542, and sail soon after.
Their orders are to reach the Western Islands, as the Spanish call the islands beyond the Moluccas, to settle there, and to find the way back. They manage only the first.
2 February 1543
On 2 February 1543 they anchor in a bay on the east coast of a great island. They call the bay Málaga, and the island Cesarea Karoli, after the emperor Charles V. It is Mindanao.
They are looking for Mazaua, the island where Magellan’s men heard the first Easter Mass in these waters. Contrary winds keep them from it, and they end up on the small island of Sarangani, off the southern tip of Mindanao.
There they stay, and starve. A survivor wrote that they ate “all the dogs, cats, and rats we could find,” then grubs, lizards and land crabs, which drove some of them mad. They planted maize, twice, and it never came up. The soldiers grumbled that “they did not come to plant, but to make conquests.”
August 1543
On 4 August 1543 Villalobos sends his smallest ship back towards Mexico to ask for help. The same day another ship sails north to look for food among “some islands … which we call Felipinas, after our fortunate prince.”
The prince is Felipe, the sixteen-year-old son of the emperor, who will become King Felipe II of Spain. The islands are Samar and Leyte, far to the north. They are the first to carry the name. Within a generation it will belong to the whole archipelago.
1545–1546
The way back defeats them, twice. The ship sent to Mexico in 1543 sets out too late in the season and turns back. In May 1545 their ship the *San Juan* tries again. Five months later it is back where it started.
Starving, and hemmed in by the Portuguese, the Spaniards give up. In February 1546 they board Portuguese ships for the island of Amboina, and there Villalobos dies. Fewer than half of the men who left Mexico live to reach the Portuguese ports of India, and the long road home to Spain.
One of them is the expedition’s accountant, Guido de Lavezaris. He will see these islands again.