Sangley


Sangley and Mestizo de Sangley are archaic terms used in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era to describe respectively a person of pure overseas Chinese ancestry as well as a person of mixed Chinese and native Filipino or Spanish ancestry. The Sangley Chinese were ancestors to both modern Chinese Filipinos and modern Filipino mestizo descendants of the Mestizos de Sangley, also known as Chinese mestizos, which are mixed descendants of Sangley Chinese and native Filipinos. Chinese mestizos were mestizos in the Spanish Empire, classified together with other Filipino mestizos.
The Spanish had such categories as indios, mestizos de Español, the tornatrás, the mestizos de Bombay, mestizos de japoneses, etc.
Overseas Chinese entered the Philippines as traders prior to Spanish colonization. Many emigrated to the Philippines, establishing concentrated communities first in Manila and throughout the island of Luzon, then in other cities and settlements throughout the archipelago, historically going from Luzon to Visayas and Mindanao.
Other Filipino terms that refer to ethnic Chinese or Filipinos with Chinese ancestry:
  • Intsik is the native, colloquial informal term in Tagalog/Filipino and other Philippine languages used to refer to Chinese people in general, albeit some speakers prefer 'Tsino' due to some perceived informal vulgar connotations.
  • Chinoy or Tsinoy is a modern term currently used in Philippine English and Tagalog/Filipino and other Philippine languages to refer to a Filipino citizen or permanent resident of either mixed or pure Chinese descent born and/or raised in the Philippines, also known as Chinese Filipinos or Fil-Chi.
  • Chino or Tsino is derived from Spanish and literally means "Chinese". "Tsino" is the formal and literary spelling in Tagalog/Filipino and other Philippine languages.
  • Chinito or Tsinito is a term derived from Spanish and means "a young Chinese man", from with the diminutive suffix 'male diminutive suffix'. "Tsinito" is the spelling in Tagalog/Filipino and other Philippine languages.
  • Chinita or Tsinita is the feminine form of the above, meaning "a young Chinese woman", also from with 'female diminutive suffix'. "Tsinita" is the spelling in Tagalog/Filipino and other Philippine languages.
  • Chekwa or Tsekwa is an offensive derogatory slang or slur referring to both Filipinos with Chinese ancestry, and Chinese people in general. It is derived from Cebuano Bisaya as an elided compound of + wikt:wakang#Cebuano 'ethnic slur expression used to tease Chinese', from "Insik wákang, káun, kalibang!", a derogatory Visayan children's limerick from the late Spanish colonial era, where "Insik"/"Intsik" was originally the Philippine Hokkien t=, and "wákang" from t=. The last two words come from and ; The full phrase was thus "Chinese, I work, eat, and shit!" and was when opium dens were rampant, with many Chinese migrants working as low-wage labourers.
  • Langlang is a very obsolete term in Tagalog referring to ethnic Chinese persons. It is recorded in the 1613 Vocabulario de la lengua tagala, where its entry reads in Early Modern. This has long fallen out of use except in food such as Pancit Langlang from Cavite. The etymon, Philippine Hokkien t=, retains its meaning and is still used primarily in Philippine Hokkien by Chinese Filipinos as an endonym.

    Etymology

There are multiple versions of the interpretation on the word Sangley, especially as it is also used in historical place names such as Punta Sangley, the northern promontory point and former US naval base headquarters in the Cavite Peninsula. Generally, Sangley is usually believed or purported to literally mean "merchant traveler" or "frequent visitor." According to Go Bon Juan, the most commonly accepted version is usually that the term "sangley" comes from the Hokkien poj=Seng-lí, International Phonetic Alphabet, which is consistent with the business background of the early Chinese in the Philippines. According to Saul Hofileña Jr on the history of Sangley Point, the name supposedly derived from 'xiangli, a Chinese word for 'trader', which became "sangley" to the Spaniards. According to Go Bon Juan, Hofileña had apparently based this on the pronunciation of the word "trader" in poj=siang-lú / siang-lír / siang-lí, which Go Bon Juan considered "a rather literal term uncommon among early Chinese in the Philippines", although Hokkien poj=siang-lú is indeed recorded in the Dictionario Hispanico Sinicum that the Dominican Spanish friars recorded before in Manila as one of the terms listed as. Another cited possible etymon is the Hokkien poj=siâng lâi, which appeared beside "Sangley" labeled in the Boxer Codex, Dasmariñas record to the King of Spain, which also contains the probable earliest romanization of Japan as "Iapon." It is said that the late William Henry Scott, an authority on Philippine history, had seen this picture and supported this version. Additionally, the Bocabulario de la lengua sangleya por las letraz de el A.B.C. also offers two explanations, it also gives Hokkien poj=siâng lâi explaining it as "he who comes very often" and Hokkien poj=siang lâi which it explains as "those who come to trade" which the Bocabulario however prefers the latter. In Wenceslao Retana's Diccionario de filipinismos, the entry for Sangley was also recorded before as :
Spanish Governor-General Francisco de Sande also notes in his Relacion y Descripciones de las Islas Filipinas as per Manuel :
The majority of Chinese sojourners, traders, and settlers in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period came from southern Fujian and spoke Hokkien, leaving their mark on Filipino culture. Although mestizo de sangley literally means "mixed-race of business," it implies a "mixed-race of Chinese and indigenous/Indio descent" because many early Chinese immigrants were traders and intermixed with the local population. Outside the Philippines, the Spanish word mestizo is normally used to refer to persons of mixed European and non-European ancestry, but the lower number of European mestizos in the Philippines made the term mestizo come to mean mestizo de sangley. For example, Benito Legarda used this definition when talking to the United States Philippine Commission, citing Wenceslao Retana's Diccionario de filipinismos. The term chino mestizo was also used interchangeably with mestizo de sangley.
In 16th to 19th century Spanish Philippines, the term mestizo de sangley differentiated ethnic Chinese from other types of island mestizos made the Chinese mestizos be granted the legal status of colonial subjects of Spain, with certain rights and privileges denied to the pure-blooded Chinese immigrants.
Today, Tsinoy or Chinoy is widely used in Filipino/Tagalog and other Philippine languages to describe a Sangley, a person born of pure or majority ethnic Han Chinese descent or of mixed native Filipino and Han Chinese ancestry or a person with likewise similar features.

Background

Mestizo de sangley is a term that arose during Spanish colonization of the Philippines, where circumstances were different from colonial settlement of the Americas. During the Spanish colonization of the Americas of the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous male Spaniards settled there. For decades most Spanish men made liaisons and intermarried with indigenous women; their children were considered mixed race and were called mestizo.
Male Chinese traders and workers came during the colonial period, most of whom intermarried with native women. The Spanish government classified the anyone who had ancestry from China as Sangley regardless of their ethnic makeup. Their mixed-race descendants with native women were classified as Mestizo de sangley; they were also known as chino mestizos.
As an example, in the late 19th century, the author and activist José Rizal was classified as mestizo de sangley due to his partial Chinese ancestry. But he also had indigenous, Japanese, and Spanish ancestors, and he asked to be classified as Indio.

History

Spanish explorers and conquistadors landed in Las Islas de Filipinas, which they named in honor of Philip II of Spain. The Spanish colonization of the Philippines required more skilled laborers and they recruited Chinese immigrants. The economy became highly dependent upon the Chinese for their economic role as traders and artisans. Most of the Chinese living in the Manila area settled in a place called the Parían near Intramuros.
The Spanish encouraged those China traders to convert to Catholicism. Many of the Chinese men married native women, and over time the multi-cultural mestizo de sangley caste developed. Although the colonial government never required them to adopt Spanish surnames, in many cases they chose to change their Chinese names. They adopted names such as Jalandoni, Laurel, Lopez, Osmeña, Palanca, Paterno, Rizal, etc., or used transliteration and Spanish phonetic spelling to make them appear Hispanic by concatenation, for example: Asico, Biazon, Chanco, Cojuangco, Cuyangkeng, Goquilay, Lacson, Landicho, Laoinco, Locsin, Ongpin, Quebengco, Sylianco, Tanbengco, Tanchanco, Tanjuatco, Tetangco, Tiongson, Tuazon, Yaptinchay, Yuchenco, Yuchengco, Yupangco, etc.
The ancient Chinese has historically had culturally chauvinist views towards people from the Philippines, whom they referred to as savages. This view intensified after the Spanish colonized the archipelago, where the people, including Spanish officials, were referred by the Chinese as xiao xiyang or barbarians. In 1574, a few years after the Spaniards established Manila as the colonial capital of the Philippines, the Chinese pirate Limahong attacked Manila and burned it to the ground. He retreated later to other places around the Luzon coast, where his forces continued killing and looting. Some of them stayed in the Philippines such as Limahong's male lover Eng Kang who later became the godson of the Spanish governor and renamed as Juan Baptista de Vera, allowing him to assimilate and partake in Philippine society without fear of consequences from Spanish authorities. Some crew of Limahang settled down and had children with native Indios. Many Sangleys, like Limahong and Eng Kang, had traditional homosexual relationships with either other Sangleys or native Indios. The Spanish, who themselves has racist views towards the Sangleys or Chinese, wanted to expel all Sangleys from the Philippines for a long time. After learning of the Sangley traditional homosexual bond system, the Spanish, especially the clergy, weaponized it to justify the massacre of many Sangley male lovers, with the intention of clearing the Philippines from any Sangleys.