As we all know, names matter. Besides what they stand for, stories of their origin are also important. They hold the key to a better understanding of the person or the thing bearing the label, after all.
This is why we are now going to answer one of the questions we’ve been getting a lot since we began: Where did “Sinaya” come from?
“Sinaya” came from “Aman Sinaya,” the deity of the ocean and protector of fishermen in Philippine Mythology.
It was said that in the beginning, only Bathala, Aman Sinaya, and Amihan existed in the world.
Bathala was the god of the sky, while Aman Sinaya was the god of the sea. They tried undoing each other every single day, with Bathala using his lightning bolts and Aman Sinaya using her waves and typhoons.
One day, Aman Sinaya sent storms to heaven, causing major turmoil. In order to stop her, Bathala had to throw boulders from the mountains toward her. These boulders became thousands of islands on the sea’s surface, hence the Philippine archipelago emerged.
Eager to stop the fight, Amihan took the form of a bird and flew back and forth in between the two gods several times. This caused the sky and the sea to become closer to one another than they were before. Then, when the two domains met eventually, the gods decided to put a halt to their battle and become friends instead.
To commemorate their friendship, Bathala planted a seed beneath the ocean floor. This later turned into a bamboo reed that stuck out on the edge of the sea. It was the same bamboo reed where Malakas and Maganda eventually came out of.
In Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society of William Henry Scott (1994), it was said that Aman Sinaya was “named when first wetting a net or fishhook.”
