I was surprised to find out that the people of the Philippines once contemplated to name their state as Malaysia.
Filipino politicians who dreamt of creating a Pan-Malay nation also considered adopting the name Malaysia, which had referred to the overall Malay archipelago before becoming the name of the newly independent Malaysian nation in 1963.5 The former Filipino Vice-President of the Pan-Malayan Union presented a bill in the Senate in 1962 to change the name of the Philippines to Malaysia (Alonto 2003 p.190). While the bill was debated in the Congress, the name was adopted by Tunku Abdul Rahman, who led the Malaysian nationalist movement, and the term narrowed to refer to the country-in-waiting, consisting of the Malay Peninsula and territories of the former British colonies in Borneo. [Reviving Malay Connections in Southeast Asia. Minako Sakai]
Suddenly, the etymology of the name Malaysia sounds like a worthy subject to research into.
2 replies on “[1419] Of what if the Phillipines were Malaysia?”
I don’t think so. See this earlier entry.
[ADMIN: suspected impersonator GaryWBush, Musa, Gul etc. Kindly ignore: see http://maddruid.com/?p=1078 ]
If Phillipines were “Republic of Malaysia”, then Malaysia would be “Tanah Melayu”. Don’t we have two Koreas, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and Republic of Korea?