A Convergence of Filipino Worlds: An Onomastic Reading of Edgar Calabia

Edgar Calabia Samar’s Janus Silang book series is a significant body of contemporary young adult fantasy novels in the Philippines. Samar’s ambitious series that successfully melds alternate online tech -worlds, everyday Filipino life, and ancient supernatural, god-inhabited worlds, is worthy of study. In creating this fantasy world, the Janus Silang series underscores the richness of Filipino mythology and lore by cohesively layering these lived worlds by way of spatial and temporal play. This paper wishes to study the value of this “world(s)-building”, entering this by way of the study of onomastics, the study of proper names of all kinds and the origins of names. Using both toponomastics and anthroponomastics, or the study of place names and human naming, respectively, this inventive, powerful focus on naming solidifies the Janus Silang series’ development of unique Filipino characters and narratives and its reintroduction of the cultures of its imaginary worlds for young, contemporary Filipino and global readers.

artistic functions of language more than its forms" (Smith in Butler 21), but literature has not really been seen as a field that lends itself to onomastics because it has been deemed lacking in the determinations that will address the linguistic attributes of names . Literary names should, in fact, be emulated as representations of referential detail that can be elicited through their usage. Baruch Hochman states that fictional characters are both configured by and the text and generated in the minds of readers who interpret them in terms of real-life models, so that they both take root in and transcend the text' and it is through a similar heuristic process that names may also come to possess semantic value, shaped by interpretation built around identifiable archetypal patterns. (in Butler 22) One specific focus of literary onomastics is the utilization of names that have been conceived for literary usage and that have seeped into the wider lexicon, reminding us that literary works are "purposefully fabricated entities", what Gwyneth Jones calls "pieces of equipment" (18). That literary elements carry particular denotations points to the referential power that enables them to symbolize the features that identify these characteristics. These are "pieces of equipment, or literary tools" because these literary elements such as setting or character take on the potency of the narrative affinities to which they are designated, a process that invests names "with a focused sense of identifiable meaning" (18). The act of naming engenders terms that "[draw] their semantic meaning from the referential capacity that a name may hold, [induce] their use as connotational symbolic representations", and in this sense, function in what Lazslo Halász calls "information network[s]", constructed through the symbolic correlations with theme or style that define literary works (18).
In literary onomastics, the meanings, sounds, and forms of names are interpreted within the limits of the text in which these are deployed, and these function as aesthetic artifacts in conju nction with the indispensable necessities of character creation and the production of textual meaning (Robinson 130). Butler supports this by saying that literary components such as setting function as "a guide to the interpretative emotional senses with which the narrative is to be engaged" and elements such as these form the basis of the contextual significance in which symbolic features are applied. This contextual relevance is the foundation in the evaluation of literary components that make for the creation of literary works (24). Names within a text, therefore, take on specific functions within archetypal semantic and symbolic configurations, and are not just "mere background […] designed to create an atmosphere [alone]" (Nicolaisen qtd. in Butler 24). Names as onomastic tokens bear significant symbolic roles in a literary work, and nominal inventions are a form of "wordsmithing", which is a term applicable too to "onomastic shaping and literary crafting" by which narratives are defined. Each onomastic token possesses a meaningful symbolic role within a work, and lexical objects that signify areas, persons, or things, albeit in forms that are nonexistent except in the text, are tenable onomastic entities that provide definitions for nominal functions and the space they occupy in the linguistic landscape (Butler 23). Stjepan Topolovec cites Stanley Lieberson's view that the process of naming involves more components that mark our comprehension of names, such as the application of exceptionally strict rules and standards in creating these name choices (6). Weiss raised the point "that the signification of names varies from the purely nonsensical to the most assuredly allegorical", and that one danger of this was what he termed a "'humptydumptification' of na mes, an irrational insistence on their fully determinate meaningfulness" (102). This referred to what Peter Alexander noted as Humpty Dumpty's reversal of agreed upon ordering of name meanings, where "in the realm beyond the looking glass, ordinary words mean whatever Humpty Dumpty wishes them to mean, while proper names are presumed to have general significance". In ordinary life, names are more disputable, conditional, and situational, and we are called to maintain an attitude that looks at nominal connotations as more fluid, while being mindful of the bounds of denotation (103; emphasis added).
Fantasy literature as a genre is remotest from realistic writing, and its attribute and its cardinal measure is "the creation of a world in which causality is based on principles that are, in comparison with the real, everyday world, non-rational (although there may be an internal rationality to the causality of that "secondary" world which is distinct from that of the "real" world)" (Burelbach 131). This "secon dary world" is distinguished from the imaginary world engendered by "main line fiction" in that these imaginary worlds are invested with characters and events that, while established on normal, logical rules of causality, are fictive, and did not, and have not really happened, but which could transpire without disturbing familiarly-held epistemologies (132). Referential linkages permeate real world spaces and entities and the validation of the semantic denotation of which in the text are upheld through the contextual characteristics and the genre of the text. This is especially so in the fantastic, which creates absolutely fictional universes and alternate terrains, more than in other literary genres, in which realities pertained to are highly meaningful in plot development (Chanady in Butler 24). We note one perspective of naming that elucidates how literary or mythical entities can be identified, although these live solely in the imagination---the view that "names are essentially sorts of disguised descriptions, which necessarily have a sense, but may only coincidentally have a referent, if by chance something in the world corresponds to the description" (Weiss 102).

The Creation of Worlds: TALA
In Samar's fantasy series, we really are dealing with two secondary, alternate worlds, one an articulation of the other. The first invented world is one to which we are initially introduced, the world of TALA, the videogame.
TALA is the acronym for Terra Anima Legion of Anitos (Samar Tiyanak 2), the game which launches Janus Silang into the mystery and chaos that will drastically alter his circumstances, and indeed, his identity, and literally impel him into other worlds.
TALA appears to be a well-chosen "brand" for an invented Philippine cybergame, because its appeal lies in the fact that it is a well-crafted "strategy game", with the "computer-generated Legion of the Soulless with its diverse creatures of the dark from [Philippine] myths, folktales, and even from urban legends, and these creatures each have their own tactics to stop you from completing a level" (2-3) 1 . The second draw of the game lies in the ingeniousness of the game process. This entails the triumph of a singular player in finding Tala, the "Bathaluman ng Liwanag" or the goddess-muse of Light, and to achieve this, each TALA player needs to create a virtual tandem called BAT (Bayani-Anito Tandem), which is the pairing of a hero and an ancestor spirit, shadow guides who help the player find Tala (3).
This BAT pairing is one significant enticement of TALA as a strategy game because the Bayani (hero) and the Anito (ancestor spirit) are designed as symbiotic entities, and this pairing is unique to each player, and in playing the game's levels, BATs are as sentient as the players in that they sto re knowledge of each level distinct from the player's own, making the repetition of levels a learning experience each time these are embarked into: "The BAT recognizes objects and details that may have been forgotten or may not have been noticed by the player" (3).
Even in the naming of TALA as a contemporary commodified entertainment, names drawn from Philippine mythology have animated the fantasy world of this role-playing game. Its quaintness, has become, in a sense, part of the selling point of the game's narrative for a young Filipino audience that the fantasy novel's plot identifies. We expressly used the term "quaintness" here, because, on a very superficial level, the naming of the game is designed by developers to utilize language that fashions worlds that are fairly realistic, but which still absorbs the players. The Janus Silang series showcases the virtual appeal of manufactured computer games, the reality of which, in much the same way as cybergames, seeps into the fabric of everyday lifein this case, in the life that Janus lives, first in his provincial hometown in Bataan, and then later in a town near Manila as he and SARE, Vol. 58, Issue 1 | 2021 70 | A n c h e t a his allies search for the real Tala and attempt to vanquish the real Tiyanak. This significant and potent connection between the process of name-giving and the society, as well as the comprehension of these names result in new word formations and sound symbolisms that superior fantasy video games employ (Topolovec 16).
The intricacies and multi-dimensional forms of fantasy games are based on nuanced but adept techniques of meticulously created networks of name giving and sound symbolism (16). Videogames are made socially germane by replicating the notable standards, mores, and conventions of contemporary society, and the names games use are crafted to be straightforward in their provision of information, and depictions and references applied contribute to a "well-crafted onomasticon that is reflective of the prevailing social concerns…" (Butler Psychosocial 218). In the novels, TALA initially mines these considerations in the packaging of the videogame, but as the novel unfolds, these merchantable considerations pale in the ligh t of the more mystical operations of Philippine mythology and world-creation as these intimately impact Janus Silang's life, and for which, we shall later learn, TALA the game was created in the first place.
In developing TALA's onomasticon, Samar's Janus Silang is heavily and significantly indebted to the creatures of Philippine lower mythology, a phrase we are expressly using here, in spite of the contested views of this now rather imprecise term. First, we have to note Jordan Clark's useful historical background into the emergence of "lower mythology" to categorize mythical beings. Clark cites the work embarked on by German scholars F.L.W. Schwartz and W. Mannhardt in the 19 th century on lower mythology as they began the work of structuring the early myths of Indo-Germanic tribes on which studies about Indo-European mythologies focused.
In these works, the term "lower mythology" was a category employed to organize truly complicated mythic structures (https://www.aswangproject.com/lower-mythology/). Lower mythology entities referred to creatures which had no verifiable existence, but whose existence is sustained within folk traditions. These are construed as "demonological", usually seen to instigate maleficence, and are categorized "below spirits, angels, deities, and ghosts", inhabiting water, trees, rocks, or are even disguised as humans.
In the Philippines, the term "lower mythology" as a way to refer to creatures who are not gods, in much the same way as early European classifications made these distinct cataloguing of "high" and "low" entities, was

The Naming of Creatures in the Janus Silang series
A significant wellspring of the foray into new worlds in TALA the game is the population of this world and, by extension, the naming of these inhabitants drawing from Philippine mythos. There are initially eight levels in the videogamein fact, there will be a new level nine in subsequent Janus Silang booksand not only are these designed for the player to reach Tala, the Paraluman (or goddess-muse), but to confront and vanquish the Tiyanak, which will prove to be Janus Silang's nemesis in his actual life. The Manananggal is classified as an aswang. Aswangs, also called asbang by ancient Tagalogs, are creatures who are usually in human form, living as ordinary, unobtrusive and evasive folk, but who have the ability to transform so that they could hurt others when darkness falls. They victimize peoples by eating their innards, or by sucking their blood and other bodily fluids (Samar Kagila-gilalas 47, my translation, emphasis Samar's). The manananggal is a winged, fanged aswang that is able to divide its body in half at nigh t and when the moon is full, the top half of its body able to fly to the roofs of their victims' houses, while the bottom half remains on the ground, usually in banana plantations because the lower limbs look like the trunks of banana trunks (48; my translation). The term manananggal is so literally descriptive, as this comes from the word "tanggal", in this sense, meaning "to detach", which is what this creature's special ability is. The Mambabarang is a person able to use insects to victimize others, by doing rituals and prayers, and then uttering whispers to command insects such as beetles, cockroaches, centipedes, or flying termites to enter the victim's body (58; my translation). The "barang" in the mambabarang's designation is both a verb and a nounas the latter, it refers to the malignant wisdom inherent in witchcraft, and as a verb form, it is the possession and the ill-use of such knowledge. While the structure of the mambabarang's name is similar to the manananggal's in that the verb and its pref ix denote ability and the possession of this ability, the mambabarang is more a practitioner of the dark arts and is not physically monstrous. The manananggal as a shapeshifter certainly is.
The Bungisngis, the Berberoka, the Sigbin, and the Dambuhalang Sarangay are all classified as monsters, marvelous or bizarre animals or animal-like creatures, which usually are savage, predatory, wild, taken as denizens of darkness and bringers of misfortune to people and harbingers of the destruction of the world (27; my translation). Burelbach acknowledges that fantasy literature presents many entities with supernatural powers, the source of which and the names corresponding to these characters are mythologies from the diverse Greek, Roman,

Creation of Worlds: Kalibutan
Janus Silang's inscription into an alternate world appears activated by the Tiyanak's malevolent plans, but is, in fact, an immersion in a more immense design, and the presentation of this Philippine conception of its mythological cosmos is a distinctive contribution of the Janus Silang series into the narratology of fantastic worlds. John Algeo avers the power of writers of fantasy works as "creators of a world whose boundaries are only what the authors choose", and as "name givers" who are able to apply that freedom to characters, places, objects, events in a manner that makes these apt and uncontrived, making fantasy "therefore potentially the richest of all genres of literature for onomastic analysis focusing on a connection between the name and the named" (252).
Kara Kennedy echoes Algeo's point, stating that characters, places, and events that create a "three -dimensional, immersive world" is constitutive of the worldbuilding process in the fantasy and science fiction genres, and the significance of naming needs to be thoroughly studied in the engendering of fantastical and distinct secondary worlds with which readers can be enthralled but which they can also totally accept (99). In Janus Silang, however, the worldbuilding does not primarily rely on the invention of an unknown world, or on the devising of new words, but in the reintroduction of Philippine myths and lore elements and vivifying these by interweaving these within the contemporary adventures of Janus Silang as protagonist in this Philippine fa ntasy text as these mythical creatures and tales are familiarly known, or as articulated narratives born of these local lore, that now imaginatively expand on, and reimagine, Janus Silang's alternate universe.
The world of Janus that corresponds to recognizable Philippine contemporary lifethe reference to recognizable and familiar places, such as Balanga in Bataan where Janus and his family live, or Angono where Manong Joey's residence and headquarters are, Marikina where Renzo stays with his Aunt Cely, or landmarks such as fastfood places like McDonalds, but these current realities are also overlaid with invented contemporary inventions peculiar to Janus's other life, such as the underground train system known only to, and which are only for, baganis, which network is existent all over the Philippines, called "trip" -a contraction of "Treng Dyip" [train that is also a jeepney] and these secret transportations do have real, familiar referents in the train and the jeepney (Samar Pusong 16-17). We had earlier noted TALA, the videogame, as another of these artifactual onomastic inventions that the series so inventively utilizes to summon us into an alternate world. Even known wars, such as the Second World War, is understood here, not just in the sense of this global battle: To the bagani, the 40s were not just about the Second World War. They named this the Battle between the Manananggal and the Mambabarang, the triumph of the world against its annihilation desired by the Tiyanak, and this was a double v ictory on the part of the bagani because they were joined in the fight against the Tiyanak by the manananggal, the Tiyanak's firstborn. (150)(151) To make sense of Janus's complicity with a mystical world is to understand his place in that world, the expanse of which is called Kalibutan, which means world. The Visayan "kalibutan" (used in Cebuano/Sugbuanon, Waray, Inakbanon in the Eastern Visayas, for instance) corresponds to the Tagalog "daigdig", or the English "world" (https://corporaproject.org/index.php?word_search=kalibutan&&language=24). It is this concept of worlds or realms that is also very evocative, because in the creation story of Kalibutan, it is a world cr eated by nine gods or Bathalas (Samar Labanang 141), the conception of the creation of the world is that the world's foundation is a series of additions and revisions. "Kalibutan" is the "name given to the other half of our world" (149), where places that exist in our reality find their duplicate, as in the other Balanga Esther the manananggal resides in as she watches over Janus in the Balanga in which he lives (cf. 162). Kalibutan is like a "hologram", "a single space…" in which the nuno and the diwatas also exist, but in which realities are projected differently" (90).
The First World of Kalibutan also brought about the End (Hanggahan), or the limit to the Expanse (Kalawakan), this birthed Space and Order, and the nine Bathalas initially deemed that thes e principles were sufficient for the world to be set in motion. In the course of renewing the world, they dismantled each world in order to add new principles that will maintain this Order. To these changes, they added first, Time, then Life, and by the time they reached an eighth making of the world, they discovered the conflict between Life and the End.
And so, they realized that they need to bring about Death in order to revive Order, and in doing so, needed to destroy the eighth world. The nine gods of the universe, in establishing the Ninth World, took responsibility for the making of specific creatures that live and die (94-95).
We note here that the term "Bathala" is taken from the Tagalog indigenous belief in an omnipotent deity who created the universe, whose name can also be spelled as Batala (https://www.definitions.net/definition/Bathala). "Bathala" is deemed to originate from the Sanskrit Bhattara Guru or "the highest of the gods"(https://www.tagaloglang.com/bathala-the-tagalog-god/). Clark cites F. Landa And the key to finding Tala, the Tiyanak's twin and the only one who can kill it, is by way of the Pusongs, of which Janus is one, as his own father was. The word "pusong" in Tagalog means "buffoonery" or "foolishness", and the person of the pusong is "foolish, impudent, profane" (https://www.wordsense.eu/pusong/). In Janus Silang, the pusong is not portrayed in this manner, but their trickery may lie in the power they have to jump back into time (Samar Pusong 118), and their ability to take on animal forms, and all their liminal and ludic powers as pusongs are in the service of finding Tala. This artfulness and shrewdness are seen in the first Pusong who saved the infant Tala, Pilandok, who is able to hide Tala from the Tiyanak and from the first Bagani who was deceived by the Tiyanak. "Pilandok", which literally refers to the mouse deer (https://www.tagaloglang.com/pilandok/), the animal into which he transforms, is characterized by this fleetness and quick-thinking in the face of danger. It is worth noting that Janus's ancestor Mahang, who first compiled the knowledge of and about pusongs, took on the name "Siláng" -Mahang of Siláng (138) -in which "Siláng" is a toponym, a place name that refers to "a trace of a path in the mountains or on the plains", an apt appellation because they come from a line of pusongs "who have rendered these ways passable, those who created all human pathway s" (138). This anthroponym is revelatory of Janus's lineage as it is of his mystical role, but it also calls to another meaning of "Silang", "to be born".
This naming is also significant especially when we take into account Janus's first name, which is unexpectedly Western. Janus is a Roman Numina, "protectors of sowers and the seed", "the god of good beginnings" (Hamilton 45). In Roman mythology, he is "the god of beginnings and transitions", who presided over passages, doors, gates and endings, as well as in transitional periods such as from war to peace", an d is best known in his depiction "as having two faces looking at opposite ways, one towards the past and the other towards the future" (https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Roman/Janus/janus.html). As the "god of gates and doors", Janus "held the key […] to the metaphorical doors and gateways between what was and what is to come -the liminal space of transitioning out of one period of time and into something new" (https://www.andersonlock.com/blog/god-doors/). Janus Silang's naming so aptly captures his ability to belong to both his world and Kalibutan, his ability to stay in the present and also to travel to the past, his p owers to outwit the Tiyanak, and all allude to what the Paraluman says about the Pusong they are waiting for: "that the one who will point the way to the Root will come from the Fruit that grows in another Time" (Samar Pusong 111-112).

Conclusion
In reckoning with many categories of naming in Samar's Janus Silang series, we have shown how this contemporary Philippine fantasy work has successfully presented an onomasticon of Philippine mythological creatures and secondary worlds that inventively introduced "new objects, artifacts, technologies, customs, institutions, ideas" and conceived "imagined cultures […] modeled after real cultures, using different combinations of their traits that an audience might find familiar, but in new configurations" (Kennedy 100). Janus Silang has achieved this by way of presenting recognizable contemporary Filipino worlds and everyday lives as embodied either in known or unfamiliar ways, represented by Filipino names and referents. The naming of worlds, their creatures, and the narratives and processes of their creation, reactivates th e remembrance of Philippine myths and lore, either as faithfully rendered or as revised, and invented reintroductions to these imaginary worlds.
Finally, we have to note that the use of Filipino as the language of the novel series contributed not just a "quaint charm" to this fantasy narrative by mining the exoticization of creating "Filipinized" fantasy worlds. We assert the integral indispensability of this language's use here as it anchors these fantastic worlds and realities that are both ancient and novel, familiar and strange, in the Filipino readers' own informational, cultural, psychical, and metaphysical terrains. Filipino beliefs in mythical creatures, and how they co -exist in the context of local life, are not just employed in Janus Silang to create familiar supernatural backgrounds that draw readers to it by virtue of this very familiarity, which is the surface appeal of many other fantasy novels. What the novels succeed in doing is melding these local mythical elements to serve a new narrative of alternate Filipino worlds. This has allowed us to examine the naming of beings, entities, places, objects in these novels not only in terms of the referential, but also by way of the symbolic values of these nominals. Samar was able to "produce change s in the nominal and cultural realms that gesture towards an even larger, more expansive, universe than is described in the story", and his "world-building […] successfully set[s] up the illusion of completeness and allow[s] readers' pre-existing knowledge to fill in the gaps" (100). The success and signal contribution of Samar's Janus Silang series is in the unfolding of an intricately detailed Kalibutan and Santinakpan by suturing together a grand narrative of good and evil that brings in diverse aspects of Filipino supernatural lore. In this paper, we have largely underscored the power of naming that manifested a uniquely Filipjno mythic world by focusing mainly on how the novels maneuvered around these named fantastic elements from Philippine lore seen in everyday life and in virtual reality, in mundane existence vis-à-vis mythic worlds. There are, too, in Samar's fantasy series, other instances of naming other speculative aspects in Filipino that are totally novel and whic h do not simply replicate known myths and creatures, but which are instead onomastic rhizomes that begin to play with these by providing these known nominal assignments new fictional twists to flesh out Samar's vision of this alternate Filipino world, SARE, Vol. 58, Issue 1 | 2021 82 | A n c h e t a which is still unfolding as the series has not yet finished. In addition to these, Samar builds on other aspects of lived experience, such as personal appellations and titles, invented transport systems and cyber applications, which can be examined further in future studies of this series. All these bode well for fantasy fiction in the Philippines, as we see how the awareness of naming becomes a potent literary tactic in crafting future speculative writing in Philippine literature. In Janus Silang, we noted the use of familiar Filipino mythic elements, but this naming opens even more portals to the imaginative crafting of original creatures and elements born of the author's ideation not only of Filipino mythos, but perhaps of other cultures as well, or even of t otally new, hitherto unknown, conceptions of worlds and universes.