A List of Philippine Baptismal Names

This slender volume emerges from a singular historical moment: the American colonization of the Philippines in the early 1900s, when teachers and administrators struggled to navigate a culture whose naming conventions confounded them. David P. Barrows, an anthropologist and future president of the University of California, gathered over 1,400 baptismal names in use throughout the archipelago, annotating each with pronunciation guides, common misspellings, and the occasional historical note. The result is less a mere catalog than a small archive of Filipino identity under colonial rule, revealing how Spanish Catholicism, indigenous tradition, and American bureaucracy collided in the simple act of naming a child. Compiler E.E. Schneider and editor Emerson Christie cross-referenced Catholic calendars and school registers to standardize spellings that had long fluctuated across regions and generations. For modern readers, the book functions as a time capsule: a glimpse into how outsiders attempted to codify a culture they were simultaneously governing, and how Filipino names themselves carry centuries of colonization, faith, and family memory.