Nobody knows where the name Visayas comes from, despite many colourful theories
The Visayas, the middle third of the Philippines, may have been named in Chinese records as early as the 12th century, when islanders raided Fujian with roped iron javelins. Spanish arrivals called the people Pintados, the painted ones, for their full-body tattoos. The origin of the word itself remains a puzzle.
Alongside Luzon and Mindanao, the Visayas make up one of the three main geographic divisions of the Philippines, clustered chiefly around the Visayan Sea at the northeastern edge of the Sulu Sea. The big islands are Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte and Samar, and Palawan, Romblon and Masbate are sometimes counted too because their languages sit closer to Visayan tongues than to Luzon's. Four administrative regions divide the population: Western Visayas with about 4.73 million, the Negros Island Region with 4.76 million, Central Visayas with 6.54 million and Eastern Visayas with 4.5 million.
The name's roots are unknown. A popular mid-20th-century idea tied Bisaya to the Sumatran empire of Srivijaya, but linguist Eugene Verstraelen noted that Sanskrit Vijaya would have become Bidaya or Biraya in Philippine languages, not Bisaya. Links to the Bisaya people of Borneo, a folk hero called Sri Visaya, or a Bruneian sultan exclaiming at the scenery are all treated as speculation. The earliest possible mention comes from the Song official Zhao Rugua, whose Pi-sho-ye raided the coasts of Fujian and Penghu in the late 12th century; later Ming writers used Peshiye.
Spaniards first lumped the islanders together as Pintados for their batok tattooing. A place called Bisaya on Mindanao's east coast shows up in reports from the Loaisa, Saavedra and Villalobos voyages of around 1526, 1528 and 1543, hinting the word was a local self-name long before colonists adopted it. Antonio de Morga's 1609 chronicle treated Biçaya and Pintados as the same, praising the people's seamanship and describing raids for booty called mangubas.
After Lapu-Lapu defeated Magellan's expedition at Mactan, Miguel López de Legazpi's voyages opened Spanish rule, and conquistadors received encomiendas on Panay and Cebu, one holding about 4,000 tributaries. Resistance followed: Tamblot's uprising in Bohol ran from 1621 to 1622, and Francisco Dagohoy's rebellion lasted from 1744 to 1829. Boundaries still shift; in May 2015 the two Negros provinces were combined into the Negros Island Region, while a 2005 order moving Palawan into Western Visayas was suspended after locals objected.
Source: Visayas
