A List of Philippine Baptismal Names

A practical guide from the early 1900s, this volume gathers more than 1,400 Philippine baptismal names to aid teachers in correctly recording their pupils’ identities. Compiled at a time when American educators were grappling with unfamiliar spellings, the list seeks to bring order to a chaotic array of variations that had crept into school registers.

The work began with Mr. E. E. Schneider’s observations in the Camarines district and was refined by Mr. Emerson Christie, who examined over 25,000 entries from Manila’s cedula records. Using the 1891 Roman Martyrology and the Royal Spanish Academy’s grammar, Christie corrected inconsistencies and highlighted common pitfalls—confusing letters like g, j, h or b, p, v, f, and misplacing accents.

Beyond its immediate classroom utility, the book offers a fascinating snapshot of colonial-era language policy and the everyday challenges of cross‑cultural education. Readers interested in Philippine history, onomastics, or the evolution of spelling conventions will find it both informative and unexpectedly human.