Cagayan de Oro Kagay-an Tee | Island Series

Kagay means river.

Add -an and you have a place with a river. That is the entire name. Linguists trace it back to kaRayan, an old Philippine word that survives as karayan in Ilocano, kahayan in Central Agta, kayan in Itawis. Different islands, different tongues, same meaning every time. River.

Spanish documents were already writing Cagayán in the 1500s. Gold arrived in the name much later. But the Manobo epics were singing it long before any of that, naming a woman Queen of Kagay-an and Queen of Lambagohon in the same line, lambago being the tree that grew along the banks.

The river starts in Bukidnon, in the Kalatungan and Kitanglad ranges, and runs roughly ninety kilometres north before it empties into Macajalar Bay. It is the reason the city sits where it sits. In 1626 the settlement came down from Himologan to the riverbank where Gaston Park and San Agustin stand today. Everything after that happened on the water's edge.

The Kagay-an Tee draws that river. One long bend running down from the horizon, waves inside it, a single orange point where the water meets the light. On the chest, the mark and the coordinates, 8.4542° N and 124.6319° E.

For every Kagay-anon who can name the river before the city. For anyone who has come off those rapids soaked and grinning.

One word. One river.

Designed in Cebu. For those who know the river came first.