NO, I am not hispanic.

Working at the reference desk, I always get this question. " Are you spanish? " or upon entering the library and their eyes dawned on me, they'll walk straight to me and speak in their native language. Whoa! Slow down. "No habla, no habla espanol". :) That's my whole spanish vocabulary, right there.

Well, anyway, here's what I got from researching:

The Philippines was colonized by Spain for 333 years, but Spanish is NOT the national language because the Spaniards did not teach it to the natives. They feared that if the natives had a common language, that would unify them and therefore, could wage an effective revolt against the colonial masters. You see, the Philippines is made up of 7,107 islands, and naturally, would have many languages. The national language of the Philippines is Filipino, based on Tagalog, the language spoken in the capital, Manila, and surrounding areas. However, many other languages are spoken in the Philippines, the major ones in terms of number of speakers are Cebuano and Ilocano.To answer the Spanish-sounding names issue, I will quote from the book "History of the Filipino People" written by Teodoro A. Agoncillo:"Probably one of the indelible marks left by the Spanish conquest on the Filipinos was the adoption of Hispanic names, as decreed by Governor Narciso Claveria in 1849.Filipinos were obligated to adopt surnames like Rizal, Del Pilar and Luna although some indigenous surnames like Mabini and Panganiban were retained.Not only were Filipinos given family names as bases for census and statistics, but the surnames also guaranteed exact tax collection, regular performance of polos y servicios personales, and control of population movement."