Ethnic groups in the Philippines


The Philippines is inhabited by more than 185 ethnolinguistic groups, many of which are classified as "Indigenous Peoples" under the country's Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997. Traditionally-Muslim minorities from the southernmost island group of Mindanao are usually categorized together as Moro peoples, whether they are classified as Indigenous peoples or not. About 142 are classified as non-Muslim Indigenous people groups. Ethnolinguistic groups collectively known as the Lowland Christians, forms the majority ethnic group.
The Muslim ethnolinguistic groups of Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan are collectively referred to as the Moro people, a broad category that includes some Indigenous people groups and some non-Indigenous people groups. With a population of over 5 million people, they comprise about 5% of the country's total population.
About 142 of the Philippines' Indigenous people groups are not classified as Moro peoples. Some of these people groups are commonly grouped together due to their strong association with a shared geographic area, although these broad categorizations are not always welcomed by the ethnic groups themselves. For example, the Indigenous peoples of the Cordillera Mountain Range in northern Luzon are often referred to using the exonym "Igorot people," or more recently, as the Cordilleran peoples. Meanwhile, the non-Moro peoples of Mindanao are collectively referred to as the Lumad, a collective autonym conceived in 1986 as a way to distinguish them from their neighboring Indigenous Moro and Visayan neighbors. Small Indigenous ethnic communities remain marginalized, and often poorer than the rest of society.
About 86 to 87 percent of the Philippine population belong to the 19 ethnolinguistic groups which are classified as neither Indigenous nor Moro. These groups are collectively referred to as "Lowland Christianized groups," to distinguish them from the other ethnolinguistic groups. The most populous of these groups, with populations exceeding a million individuals, are the Ilocano, the Pangasinense, the Kapampangan, the Tagalog, the Bicolano, and the Visayans. These native and migrant lowland coastal groups converted to Christianity during the Spanish colonization which culturally unified them and adopted heavy western elements of culture throughout the country's history.
Due to the past history of the Philippines since the Spanish colonial era, there are also some historical migrant heritage groups such as the Chinese Filipinos and Spanish Filipinos, both of whom intermixed with the above lowland Austronesian-speaking ethnic groups, which produced Filipino Mestizos. These groups also comprise and contribute a considerable proportion of the country's population, especially its bourgeois, and economy and were integral to the establishment of the country, from the rise of Filipino nationalism by the Ilustrado intelligentsia to the Philippine Revolution. Other peoples of migrant and/or mixed descent include American Filipinos, Indian Filipinos, and Japanese Filipinos.
Aside from migrant groups which speak their own languages, most Filipinos speak languages classified under the Austronesian language family, including the various Negrito peoples of the archipelago, which are genetically and phenotypically distinct from the other ethnic groups of the Philippines. While these groups have maintained a culture and identity distinct from neighboring ethnic groups, they have long adapted their neighbors' Austronesian languages. Traditionally subcategorized geographically as the Ati people of Visayas and Mindanao, and the Aeta of Luzon, the Negrito population was estimated at 31,000 as of 2004.

Origins

There are several opposing theories regarding the origins of ancient Filipinos, starting with the "Waves of Migration" hypothesis of H. Otley Beyer in 1948, which claimed that Filipinos were "Indonesians" and "Malays" who migrated to the islands. This is completely rejected by modern anthropologists and is not supported by any evidence, but the hypothesis is still widely taught in Filipino elementary and public schools resulting in the widespread misconception by Filipinos that they are "Malays".
The most widely accepted theory, however, is the "Out-of-Taiwan" model which follows the Austronesian expansion during the Neolithic in a series of maritime migrations originating from Taiwan that spread to the islands of the Indo-Pacific; ultimately reaching as far as New Zealand, Easter Island, and Madagascar. Austronesians themselves originated from the Neolithic rice-cultivating pre-Austronesian civilizations of the Yangtze River delta in coastal southeastern China pre-dating the conquest of those regions by the Han Chinese. This includes civilizations like the Liangzhu culture, Hemudu culture, and the Majiabang culture. It connects speakers of the Austronesian languages in a common linguistic and genetic lineage, including the Taiwanese indigenous peoples, Islander Southeast Asians, Chams, Islander Melanesians, Micronesians, Polynesians, and the Malagasy people. Aside from language and genetics, they also share common cultural markers like multihull and outrigger boats, tattooing, rice cultivation, wetland agriculture, teeth blackening, jade carving, betel nut chewing, ancestor worship, and the same domesticated plants and animals.
Prehistoric Tabon Man, found in Palawan in 1962 was, until 2007, the oldest human remains discovered by anthropologists in the Philippines. Archaeological evidence indicates similarities with two early human fossils found in Indonesia and China, called the Java Man and Peking Man. In 2007, a single metatarsal from an earlier fossil was discovered in Callao Cave, Peñablanca, Cagayan. That earlier fossil was named as Callao Man.
The Negritos arrived about 30,000 years ago and occupied several scattered areas throughout the islands. Recent archaeological evidence described by Peter Bellwood claimed that the ancestors of Filipinos, Malaysians, and Indonesians first crossed the Taiwan Strait during the Prehistoric period. These early mariners are thought to be the Austronesian people. They used boats to cross the oceans, and settled into many regions of Southeast Asia, the Polynesian Islands, and Madagascar.
Two early East Asian waves were detected, one most strongly evidenced among the Manobo people who live in inland Mindanao, and the other in the Sama-Bajau and related people of the Sulu archipelago, Zamboanga Peninsula, and Palawan. The admixture found in the Sama people indicates a relationship with the Lua and Mlabri people of mainland Southeast Asia, and reflects a similar genetic signal found in western Indonesia. These happened sometime after 15,000 years ago and 12,000 years ago respectively, around the time the last glacial period was coming to an end.
The first Austronesians reached the Philippines at around 2200 BC, settling the Batanes Islands and northern Luzon. From there, they rapidly spread downwards to the rest of the islands of the Philippines and Southeast Asia, as well as voyaging further east to reach the Northern Mariana Islands by around 1500 BC. They assimilated the older Negrito groups which arrived during the Paleolithic, resulting in the modern Filipino ethnic groups, which all display various ratios of genetic admixture between Austronesian and Negrito groups. By the 14th century, the Malayo-Polynesian ethnolinguistic groups had dominated and displaced the Negrito population in most areas. Traders from southern China, Japan, India, and Arabia also contributed to the ethnic and cultural development of the islands. Papuan ancestry was also detected among the ethnic Blaan and Sangir people of Mindanao, suggesting that there was westward expansion of peoples from Papua New Guinea into the Philippines. The integration of Southeast Asia into Indian Ocean trading networks around 2,000 years ago also shows some impact, with South Asian genetic signals present within some Sama-Bajau communities.
By the 16th century, Spanish colonization brought new groups of people to the Philippines mainly Spaniards and Indigenous Mexicans. Many settled in the Philippines and intermarried with the indigenous population. This gave rise to the Filipino mestizo or individuals of mixed Austronesian and White or Indigenous American descent. There was migration of a military nature from the Americas to the Philippines, originally planned to include only Spaniards and mestizos but progressively including most other groups during late 17th century. Recruitment followed general levies in New Spain cities mostly, but about 25% of the soldiers were common prisoners or illegal immigrants arrived from Spain forced to serve in Philippines as soldiers as described by Stephanie J. Mawson in her article "Convicts or Conquistadores? Spanish Soldiers in the Seventeenth-Century Pacific". In that article as well as her dissertation paper called, 'Between Loyalty and Disobedience: The Limits of Spanish Domination in the Seventeenth Century Pacific', she recorded an accumulated number of 15,600 soldiers sent to the Philippines from the Americas during the 1600s, outnumbering civilians in 7 to 1. In contrast, civilian immigration was much lower, with just about 5,000 civilians departing Spain to Philippines from 1571 to 1799, about half that number during 1600s. Clerics composed more than half of the civilian legal migrant population during 1600s. Only about a couple hundred Spanish women migrated to Philippines until 19th century, almost all of them in the early period before 1630. The total population of the Philippines in the first Spanish census was about 667,612.
Location16031636164216441654165516701672
Manila900446—407821799708667
Fort Santiago—22——50—8681
Cavite—70——89—225211
Cagayan4680————155155
Calamianes——————7373
Caraga—45————8181
Cebu8650————135135
Formosa—180——————
Moluccas80480507—389———
Otón6650————169169
Zamboanga—210——184———
Other255———————
————————
Total Reinforcements1,5331,6332,0672,085n/an/a1,6321,572

Another 35,000 Mexican immigrants arrived in the 1700s and they were part of a Philippine population of only 1.5 million, forming about 2.3% of the population.
In the late 1700s to early 1800s, Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga, an Agustinian Friar from Spain, in his Two Volume Book: "Estadismo de
las islas Filipinas" compiled a census of the Spanish-Philippines based on the tribute counts and came upon the following statistics:
ProvinceNative TributesSpanish Mestizo TributesAll Tributes
Tondo14,437-1/23,52827,897-7
Cavite5,724-1/28599,132-4
Laguna14,392-1/233619,448-6
Batangas15,01445121,579-7
Mindoro3,1653-1/24,000-8
Bulacan16,586-1/22,00725,760-5
Pampanga16,604-1/22,64127,358-1
Bataan3,0826195,433
Zambales1,136734,389
Ilocos44,852-1/263168,856
Pangasinan19,836719-1/225,366
Cagayan9,888011,244-6
Camarines19,686-1/2154-1/224,994
Albay12,33914616,093
Tayabas7,396129,228
Cebu28,112-1/262528,863
Samar3,0421034,060
Leyte7,67837-1/210,011
Caraga3,49704,977
Misamis1,27801,674
Negros Island5,74107,176
Iloilo29,72316637,760
Capiz11,4598914,867
Antique9,228011,620
Calamianes2,28903,161
TOTAL299,04913,201 424,992-16

The Spanish-Filipino population as a proportion of the provinces widely varied; with as high as 19% of the population of Tondo province , to Pampanga 13.7%, Cavite at 13%, Laguna 2.28%, Batangas 3%, Bulacan 10.79%, Bataan 16.72%, Ilocos 1.38%, Pangasinan 3.49%, Albay 1.16%, Cebu 2.17%, Samar 3.27%,
Iloilo 1%, Capiz 1%, Bicol 20%, and Zamboanga 40%. According to the data, in the Archdiocese of Manila which administers much of Luzon under it, about 10% of the population was Spanish-Filipino. Overall the whole Philippines, even including the provinces with no Spanish settlement, as summed up, the average percentage of Spanish Filipino tributes amount to 5% of the total population.
The current modern-day Chinese Filipinos are
mostly the descendants of immigrants from Southern Fujian in China from the 20th century and late 19th century, possibly numbering around 2 million, although there are an estimated 27 percent of Filipinos who have partial Chinese ancestry, stemming from precolonial and colonial Chinese migrants from the past centuries especially during the Spanish Colonial Era. Intermarriage between the groups is evident in the major cities and urban areas, and spans back to Spanish colonial times, where a colonial middle-class group known as the Mestizo de Sangley descend from. Its descendants during the late 19th century produced a major part of the ilustrado intelligentsia of the late Spanish Colonial Philippines, that were very influential with the creation of Filipino nationalism and the sparking of the Philippine Revolution. In 2013, according to the Senate of the Philippines, there were approximately 1.35 million ethnic Chinese within the Philippine population, while Filipinos with any Chinese descent comprised 22.8 million of the population.
The Philippines was a former American colony and during the American colonial era, there were over 800,000 Americans who were born in the Philippines., there were 220,000 to 600,000 American citizens living in the country. In 2025, the number of Americans living in the Philippines increased to at least 750,000 forming 0.75% of the population and there are also 250,000 Amerasians scattered across the cities of Angeles City, Manila, and Olongapo, forming aboout 0.25% of the Philippine population. Together, both American and Amerasian people form 1% of the Philippines.
There are also Japanese people, which include escaped Christians who fled the persecutions of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu which the Spanish authorities in the Philippines had offered asylum from to form part of the Japanese settlement in the Philippines. In the 16th and 17th centuries, thousands of Japanese people traders also migrated to the Philippines and assimilated into the local population.
Practicing forensic anthropology, while exhuming cranial bones in several Philippine cemeteries, researcher Matthew C. Go estimated that 7% of the mean amount, among the samples exhumed, have attribution to European descent. Research work published in the Journal of Forensic Anthropology, collating contemporary Anthropological data show that the percentage of Filipino bodies who were sampled from the University of the Philippines, that is phenotypically classified as Asian is 72.7%, Hispanic is at 12.7%, Indigenous American at 7.3%, African at 4.5%, and European at 2.7%. However, this is only according to an interpretation of the data wherein the reference groups, which were cross checked to the Filipino samples; for the Hispanic category, were Mexican Americans, and the reference groups for the: European, African, and Indigenous American, categories, were: White Americans, Black Americans, and Native Americans from the USA, while the Asian reference groups were sourced from Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese origins. In contrast, a different anthropology study using Morphoscopic ancestry estimates in Filipino crania using multivariate probit regression models by J. T. Hefner, while analyzing Historic and Modern samples of Philippine skeletons, paint a different picture, in that, when the reference group for "Asian" was Thailand rather than Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese; and the reference group for Hispanic was Colombians rather than Mexicans, the historical and modern sample results for Filipinos, yielded the following ratios: Asian at 48.6%, African at 32.9%, and only a small portion classifying as either European at 12.9%, and finally for Hispanic at 5.7%.