By Herman M. Lagon

The question sounds simple: Who was the first Filipino? The quick reply is a name. The steady reply is a map. Ask a classroom full of teachers and students, and 10 answers will surface — Lapu-Lapu, José Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, a Negrito ancestor, even a fossil from a cave. None is absurd. Each uses a different rulebook. Before any flag, the islands already held human footsteps. In Callao Cave, Luzon, scientists described Homo luzonensis, a small-bodied hominin that lived more than 50,000 years ago (Détroit et al., 2019). In Palawan’s Tabon Caves, bones dated roughly 47,000 years point to early Homo sapiens here, long before the word “Filipino” was minted. If “first Filipino” means earliest humans in these islands, the fossils win by millennia — though, to be fair, they are first in a biological, not a civic, sense.

Shift the lens from bones to boats. Around 4,000 years ago, Austronesian-speaking voyagers sailed from Taiwan, reached the Batanes by about 2200 BCE, and then spread south (Bellwood & Dizon, 2005; Spriggs, 2011). They brought pottery styles, plant staples, maritime know-how, and the linguistic roots of most tongues we use at school and at home — Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilokano, Bicolano, Hiligaynon, and many others. If “first Filipino” means the cultural line that shaped how we talk, eat and organize kin, then these seafarers, together with older Negrito communities already present here, stand early in the queue. In staff rooms from Basco to Basilan, you can hear that deep linguistic braid in everyday conversation, lesson plans and jokes about “baon,” “bangka” and “bahay.”

Names came later. In 1543, the Spaniard Ruy López de Villalobos named parts of the archipelago “Las Islas Filipinas” for Prince Philip, later Philip II. The label eventually stretched to cover more islands and peoples. Under Spanish rule, the term “Filipino” did not mean all islanders; it was used mainly for Spaniards born in the islands — the insulares — while the native majority were called indios. Terms are not trivia; they teach us how power shapes identity. A teacher introducing primary sources will quickly see that vocabulary can exclude most people while sounding official, which is why classroom discussions must always ask, “Filipino according to whom, and when?” As public historian Xiao Chua often reminds his audiences, words are never neutral; they carry the weight of who gets included and who gets left out.

By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the word began to shift. Luis Rodríguez Varela, a Manila writer known as “El Conde Filipino,” used “Filipino” as a political identity rooted here rather than in Madrid (Ocampo, 2010). He didn’t define “Filipino” alone , yet he was early, outspoken and published for all to read. The seed he planted grew in the 19th century, when writers and organizers pushed “Filipino” to mean everyone in these islands, not just the creole elite. If you want a classroom activity that lands, ask students to examine the changing meanings of “Filipino” across texts: a parish baptismal record, a creole pamphlet, a poem, a revolutionary document. You will see a name widen its circle.

Enter José Rizal. In 1879, he dedicated “A La Juventud Filipina” to “the Filipino youth,” and in doing so, helped broaden “Filipino” from a creole label into an inclusive call that embraced indios, mestizos and insulares — one people addressed together. This was not yet independence; it was language doing quiet work. Rizal would later push civic reform — rights, schools, equal laws — believing premature revolt could fracture a fragile public, while Bonifacio concluded that independence must be seized (Anderson, 1983). That healthy tension between reform and revolution still guides how we teach citizenship: one strand refines institutions, the other insists on freedom as a necessary starting point. Both streams meet in the First Republic.

The First Philippine Republic gave “Filipino” a legal frame — a constitution drafted and ratified by representatives of these islands. Whatever definition one prefers, Malolos matters because it turned a broad identity into a political order: rights on paper, a government formed by Filipinos, for Filipinos. If your homeroom ever builds a mock congress, use Malolos articles on civil liberties as a starting text. Students instantly hear the difference between a label and a law. Names inspire; constitutions obligate.

Part of the teacher’s job is clearing up beautiful myths that do not survive source work. The “Code of Kalantiaw,” once printed in textbooks as a 1400s law from Panay, was exposed by historian William Henry Scott as a 20th-century hoax later disowned by authorities (Justiniano, 2011). Pride built on shaky stories will always wobble. This is not nitpicking; it is respect for our students. If we want them to take “Filipino” seriously, we must model how to love our past without fabricating it. The real record — earthquakes, uprisings, poets, pandemics — already offers enough drama.

So, who was first? It depends on the rulebook. If the rule is biology, Homo luzonensis and the Tabon remains hold the earliest dates. If the rule is language and culture, the first Austronesian settlement waves that made our words and foodways say a lot. If the rule is documents, power and passports, “Filipino” forms under Spain, is stretched by Rodríguez Varela, is broadened by Rizal and his generation, and is codified at Malolos. None of these cancels the others. The wiser task in class is to teach students to declare their rulebook when they answer, so they argue clearly and listen fairly.

There is also the civic rulebook. Herder wrote about peoples as communities tied by language, custom and shared memory (Forster, 2001). Anderson (1983) later described nations as “imagined communities” — not imaginary, but agreements among millions of strangers to live as one. In teacher’s life, that “imagining” looks ordinary: a guidance week that includes every mother tongue in the hallway posters, a typhoon prep module that respects both science and elders’ flood memories, a class project in Davao where “trash-to-cash” builds the reading corner and not just the selfie wall. The student who first says, “Your lola’s story matters like mine,” is the newest “first Filipino” I know.

If a single name is required, state the rule and choose. If the rule is political leadership, some point to Bonifacio as the first president of a revolutionary government, while others credit Aguinaldo as the president of the First Republic. If it is nationalist imagination, many will say Rizal. If it is defiance, Lapu-Lapu waits by the shore. If it is an early, printed self-naming, Varela has a claim. If it is ancestry, the first footsteps are in our caves. I favor a simpler answer for teachers: There was no single “first,” because “Filipino” grew in layers — bones, boats, books, and brave choices — until the word could hold us all.

And what better time to weigh this than Rizal Day, December 30, 2025. Rizal was not our first in the fossil sense or the legal sense, but he was among the first to insist that the word “Filipino” should include everyone — from indio to mestizo to insular. As we gather in schools, town plazas and cemeteries this Rizal Day, let us remember that his inclusive vision was not an end but an invitation. To be Filipino is not just about who came first, but who steps forward now. The wreaths, the speeches, the flags at half-mast today remind us of Rizal’s sacrifice. But they should also remind us of our unfinished task: to live up to a name built over centuries. The better question for this Rizal Day is not only “Who was the first Filipino?” but “Who will be the first today to act like a Filipino when it is hardest?”

***

Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with./WDJ