All around us, especially in mainstream press and social media, is the much-discussed and least understood but contentious Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF).

But this is not what our column is chiefly all about today; it is about the word ‘maharlika.’

In Philippine history, we are told that a Maharlika is a feudal warrior class, a lower nobility, exclusive to Luzon and was part of ‘ancient Tagalog society.’ He is compared to the Visayan ‘timawa,’ the poor, and the ‘mayokmok,’ the grassroots. Other than that, nobody has thoroughly explained where the term has originated or how it has evolved into a social class.

During the first Marcos government, the drumbeat to rename the Philippines almost gained currency. The bright boys in the bureaucracy wanted the country, named after Spanish king Philip II, rechristened Maharlika, obviously drawing inspiration from the claim that it refers to a noble lineage Filipinos should be proud of. Except in historical assertions, however, the etymology and orthography of Maharlika are downright obscure.

Back then, when martial rule was in its early years, a series of articles on the origin of ‘maharlika’ was published in the dynamite We Forum. It was so well written by an Oxford-educated Filipino (name escapes at the moment) that it ignited the attention of Malacañang.

During World War II, President Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr. named his mythical unit Maharlika, which partisans later floated as an appropriate name for a people that rose from nobility.

Strictly speaking, Maharlika is borrowed from the Sanskrit ‘maharddhika,’ translated popularly as ‘a man of wealth, knowledge or ability.’ Unlike the Pinoy maharlika who was a lower-class nobility, the Indian counterpart was a royalty entitled to better and higher amenities.

The article also detailed that the term has sexual insinuations. For a nobleman to become part of the royalty, he should possess a penile tool that is bigger than what the regular guys have. In short, maharlika, beyond being a title of distinction, also carries phallic allusions.

Fortunately, the vitriols generated by the articles drowned the ominous complot to rename the archipelago as a country of individuals with big phalluses. With the avalanche of opposition further destabilizing the already shaky Marcos leadership, the Maharlika agenda was eventually ditched, forgotten, and just died naturally.

Now comes the revival of the loanword as the title of the prickly MIF agenda that the legislature recently passed. Whoever suggested this has either sycophancy in mind or was simply idiotic when it comes to understanding the real meaning of the term. In fact, there is nothing really noble in the intent to invest public money in a dubious sovereign fund investment other than impulse.

While the Senate version includes the exclusion of pension funds like SSS, GSIS, Pag-IBIG and related monies in subsidizing the MIF, the danger of the excepted resources being reinserted in the synchronized veersion looms real because the bicameral conference committee can always use its power to impose or supplement provisions not found in the House and Senate versions.

The restoration of Marcos-affiliated terms, moreover, also reminds us of the despicable practice of renaming projects through acronyms that thinly hid the identities of patrons, or using agency logos as tributes to benefactors.

For instance, in the mid-1970s, the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) launched the Fishery Industry Resource Management (FIRM) to partner with the Bureau of Fisheries. The undertaking’s acronym stands for ‘Ferdinand Imelda Romualdez Marcos.’

Then there was the original logo of the Project for Forest Ecosystem Management (PROFEM) that showed the seven faces of Marcos. Its acronym, which is a giveaway, stands for ‘Profile for Ferdinand Edralin Marcos.’ (7 is Marcos Sr.’s lucky number.)