OUR ancestors had a lot of fun with sex. Pre-colonial Visayan men, Pigafetta wrote, had metal rods “the size of a goose quill” pierced across their penises because “the women wish it so.” During intercourse, a woman “gently introduces first the top spur and then the bottom one into her vagina. Once inside, the penis becomes erect and cannot be withdrawn until it is limp.”
It was painful but, as Fray Juan de Medina reported, the women would have it no other way and were actually “grief-stricken” when Spanish missionaries forced them to give it up.
Ancient Kapampangans, on the other hand, didn’t need to mutilate their sex organs but merely put on a ring of horse hairs called curicung. It was called paláng in Borneo which prompted historian Dr. Lino Dizon to speculate that pre-colonial blacksmiths in Capalangan, Apalit might have sold things other than cannons and blades.
Our ancestors considered sex as a normal daily activity, enjoying every minute of it, imputing no malice to it, and creating a whole vocabulary of sex terms from it—until the Spaniards taught us to do it under a blanket and with all the lights out, and to confess everything to a priest afterwards!
Ancient Kapampangans, for example, had multiple words for genitals (puqui and antac for vagina, butu and calalaqui for penis) and multiple words for details of the genitals (tingguil and tuca for clitoris, burat and bulasisi for glans or head of penis, tungtung for foreskin of the uncircumcised penis, guilit for the frenulum or skin tissue beneath the glans).
Titi was only borrowed from the Tagalogs; its original Kapampangan meaning is “to liquefy lard and fry something in it,” which is why we have the word pititian (fried pork skin).
Butubutu refers to anything that dangles, like a bell’s clapper. Its synonym is tauil (“to dangle, like the tail of a horse”) but when it refers specifically to the dangling male organ, our ancestors used only one word: tauing.
The term for “uncircumcised” is sipút (corrupted today to supút); tuli is “circumcised.”
Our ancestors also had multiple words for semen: bait, banis and cupal. Quebaitan, which means “birthday” today, originally meant “one who has a nocturnal emission (wet dream).” Mibanisan refers to someone “stained with ejaculated semen” while Cupal mo! (“Your semen!”) is considered an insult today.
“Lust” had many synonyms in the Kapampangan language: libi, liud and gatal. The Spanish missionary Fray Diego Bergaño, who recorded these words in his 1732 Kapampangan dictionary, recorded this angry mother’s advice to a wayward daughter: Intan nung minggatal ca, e micudcuran cabibi? (“If you were itching so, why don’t you just scratch it with a clam shell?”)
Mipaglibi is when two persons arouse each other. Bergaño gave this example: Ali iyan picuyug ing lub yu yang mayap, nun e ing calibian yu (“It’s not your mutual affection that bound you together, but your common lasciviousness.”). Linggaso means “to seduce or arouse someone to lust.” Magbulasisi and magburat both mean “to masturbate oneself” or “to masturbate another.” Alung is a verb that means “to amuse oneself, to play with a toy or with one’s private parts” (hence we have the words pialung and mamialung).
Promiscuous women were malandi, promiscuous men matalasa. In those days, people who pinched and pulled each other’s ears were already considered mipaglandi and mipagtalasa. Lipuro is the ancient Kapampangan word for “touching the nipple.”
Bilac is “to spread one’s legs,” bicang “to spread the legs or open an oyster,” lalac “to open the legs to allow something to pass through.” Macayapág, according to Bergaño, can refer to either “food placed on the table” or “a prostitute offering herself for whoring.” Mánabang is either “to wait for someone from whom to solicit” or “to offer sexual favors to passersby.”
Both ancient Tagalogs and ancient Kapampangans specified degrees of nudity: naked from waist down was hubo (for Tagalogs) and limbayung (for Kapampangans), naked from waist up was hubad (for Tagalogs), and totally naked was thus hubo’t hubad.
Our ancestors didn’t mince words even for unspeakable sexual acts. Today we use “the F word” in English and “the K word” in Kapampangan, or the euphemisms “to make love” or “to sleep with”—all to mean coitus. Our ancestors simply said ayut, as in Ayutan mu ya (“Go have sex with her”) and Mipanayut la (“They’re having sex”).
Our ancestors also had a synonym for it, mipangatauan (from the root catauan, “body”), which means “two bodies in an act of copulation.”
The Kapampangan word atdac (“to thrust, stab, pierce or prick”) can mean two different things depending on conjugation: itdac, itatdac, tindac refer to “a bamboo pole being thrust against the riverbank,” while tacdac, tindac, tundac refer to “the thrust of the erect male organ.” Quinnyud is “the rhythmic thrusts during copulation, referring to both beast and man,” while tacal is the same thing but referring only to animals.
Magbábi (“to behave like pigs”) is the ancient Kapampangan term for incest (sex between family members) and bestiality (sex between man and animal). Today, binábi, binabián and cabinabián refer to unhygienic behavior.
The Kapampangan language had words for ancient cross-dressers: magbabái (a male transvestite) and maglaláqui (a woman in men’s clothes). Magbabaí (stressed on the i) is “to womanize” and mánlalaqui is “an adulterer.” Binabai is “an effeminate man,” linalaqui “a tomboyish woman.” Our ancestors had a word for sodomy: bulditan (“use the buttocks”). Tiup, the Kapampangan term for “to blow” (as in tiup ning trumpeta) is probably the basis for today’s Kapampangan and Tagalog word for “blowjob.”
In 1732, Bergaño transcended the prudishness of his times to celebrate the vigor, the freedom and the color of the Kapampangan language, by collecting these sex words and recording them for posterity (and he was a priest). Today, nearly 300 years later, we have ironically become more repressed, and as a result, our language has dulled and our once wide vocabulary has shrunk.
May this Valentine’s Day bring back the same vigor, freedom and color not just to our language but to the way we look at love and sex—two sides of the same coin, the root of all life on earth, the cause of all the beautiful and ugly things ever done, all the crimes ever committed and all the passions ever felt.
Just make sure you don’t get sucked into what Charles Bukowski calls “a gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each other,” getting all tangled up in love and sex, mistaking one for the other and ending up in an octopus mess of tears and guilt—strangers when you meet, still strangers when you part.
In short, don’t be promiscuous—it’s immoral, says Ayn Rand, not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important that it should only be done within the confines of a serious relationship.
Happy Valentine!