Tuesday, June 12, 2012

"Hinup-akan" could be the origin of Inopacan


This is something to ponder about.

Another possibility of the origin of Inopacan town's name is HINUP-ACAN from the root word "hup-ak," referring to the luno (slough or skin shedded by snakes).

The town proper in 2010 
(Photo by Edgie Polistico)

The place is known not only for being infested with "namok" from which it got its old name "Kanamokan" (the place of mosquitoes), but also for being an old place where snakes are commonly found. A manifestation that snakes are abounding in the area and the presence of hinup-akan in the place existed are the "Bay sa has" (house of snake) cave and the story of Inong Pak-an fighting the serpentine snake, and the story of Barangay Binitinan (place of bitin, also a snake. Binitinan is the old name of Barangay Guadalupe). Not to mention that there are many areas in and surrounding the town proper where tunneling caves and other subterranean crevices can be found, which are favorite places for snakes. The network of underground crevices even reached Cuatro Islas and solitaire hill in Brgy. Bontoc of Hindang.

When the snake is shedding off its skin, we call it "nagluno" or "nanghup-ak ang panit" and the shedded slough is called "hinup-ak" or "hinup-akan" and the place where the slough is found or where the snake would shed their skin is also called "hinup-akan"

Thus, the following: 

HINUP-ACAN => HINUPACAN => INUPACAN => INOPACAN

The eventual disappearance of the letter H in Hinup-akan could be attributed to the fact that in Spanish, the letter H is often silently pronounced if it is used as the first letter in a word. e.g. hora (o-ra) for time, hielo (ye-lo) for ice, etc. It was during the Spanish colonization era that the names of places in the country were officially recorded.

By the way also, what sounds like the letter K is more often replaced with the prominent and same-sounding letter C in Spanish in that same era. For example, they used to write camo for kamo  (you), aco for ako (I), buac for buak (broken), calayo for kalayo (fire), caldero for kaldero (cooking pot), cura paruco for kura paruko (parish priest), etc. This explains why the C in Inopacan sounds exactly like that of letter K. With this, we can shorten the derivation to look like this:

HINUP-ACAN => HINUPACAN => INUPACAN =>  INOPACAN

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