The return of the nilad and the debate over Manila's name

As Manila marked its 455th founding anniversary this month with the theme Araw ng Maynila Matatag sa Hamon, Pinagtibay ng Panahon, discussions once again surfaced about the origins of the city’s name. Alongside commemorations of the Spanish founding of Manila on June 24, 1571, renewed attention has also been directed toward an older story—one rooted not in colonial institutions but in the natural environment that shaped the settlement long before Spanish rule.

This renewed interest owes much to an environmental initiative launched in 2020 by the city government of Manila and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to replant and revive the nilad (Scyphiphora hydrophyllacea), a mangrove species historically associated with the city's name.

More than an ecological project, the return of the nilad invites us to reconsider how nature, language and memory intersect in the making of place identities.

Among scholars, Manila is generally regarded as a phytotoponym—a place name derived from a plant. The most familiar explanation traces Maynila to the phrase “may nilad” or “ma nilad,” referring to a place where nilad plants once grew abundantly.

The mangrove thrived in the swampy and coastal areas surrounding early Manila, making the name a descriptive marker of the area's ecological landscape.

One of the most frequently cited proponents of this explanation was the Spanish friar and botanist Fr. Manuel Blanco (1778–1845).

In his Flora de Filipinas (1837), Blanco identified “nilad” as the Tagalog name of the plant he called Ixora manila. He described it as a small mangrove-like tree that flourished in marshy environments and noted that Manila derived its name from the abundance of these plants. For Blanco, the city’s name was inseparable from its natural surroundings.

Yet Blanco was not the first to make this connection. More than a century earlier, the Jesuit missionary, pharmacist and naturalist Georg Joseph Kamel (1661–1706) had already documented the nilad.

Kamel’s observations, published in Volume 3 of John Ray’s Historia plantarum (1704), identified the plant as the source of the name Manila. He explained that Maynilad described a place where nilad plants were found and that the term gradually evolved into Manila through changes in pronunciation.

Kamel’s account remains significant because it situates Manila’s name within local environmental conditions rather than colonial linguistic intervention. Coming from one of the earliest systematic studies of Philippine flora, it also provides valuable evidence of how local communities understood the landscape around them.

Yet not all scholars accepted this interpretation. In 1887, Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera proposed a different origin in El Sánscrito en la Lengua Tagalog. He argued that Manila derived from the Sanskrit-related term "nila," linking it to Ixora manila and Indigofera tinctoria, a plant associated with blue dye production and regional trade networks. His explanation gained support from scholars such as Alexander Chamberlain and Joseph Baumgartner and became influential in academic circles. 

This alternative view continues to appear in heritage articles and popular histories, illustrating that the question of Manila's name has never been fully settled.

Over time, however, confusion emerged as some writers treated “nila” as a doublet of nilad and conflated both with Indigofera tinctoria. As French linguist Jean-Paul Potet later observed, these interpretive leaps encouraged the belief that Maynila derived from the indigo plant despite weak linguistic and historical evidence 

Another popular claim holds that Spanish colonizers simply removed the final "d" from Maynilad, producing Maynila or Manila. Historical evidence suggests a more nuanced picture.

In 1676, Dominican missionary Domingo Fernández Navarrete recorded that local inhabitants referred to the area as Mainila. Other Spanish accounts likewise indicate that forms of Maynila without the final consonant were already being used by Tagalogs themselves. 

Still, this does not necessarily invalidate the possibility that Maynilad preceded Maynila. Place names naturally evolve over time. The history of Tondo offers a useful parallel. In the Laguna Copperplate Inscription—the oldest known Philippine document, dated to 900 CE—the settlement appears as “Tundun.” Most scholars identify this with present-day Tondo.

Through centuries of linguistic change, the final “-n” likely softened or disappeared, producing the modern form. By the same process, Maynilad could plausibly have evolved into Maynila through the loss of the final consonant. Seen in this context, it remains entirely plausible that Maynilad evolved into Maynila through the gradual loss of the final consonant. Through time, sounds disappear, spellings shift and pronunciations adapt. 

The ongoing effort to restore the nilad plant is therefore more than an environmental undertaking. It serves as a reminder that Manila’s history is deeply intertwined with its ecological past.

Whether one subscribes to the nilad or nila etymology, the debate itself underscores the importance of understanding the city not only through colonial milestones but also through the landscapes, languages, and local communities that shaped its earliest identity.

As Manila celebrates another year of its history, the return of the nilad offers a timely opportunity to reconnect with those roots. In bringing back a plant once associated with the city’s name, we are also recovering a part of Manila’s environmental memory—one that reminds us that before it became a colonial capital, it was first a place defined by the natural world around it.

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This article is adapted from the research study “Ang Pagbabalik ng Nilad: Ang Kasaysayan ng Isang Toponimo” (2025) by Wensley M. Reyes and Trisha Anne M. Mataac. Reyes is an Associate Professor and Convenor of the Manila Studies Program at UP Manila, while Mataac serves as its Junior Research Associate. They may be reached through the Manila Studies Program at [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of UP Manila.