BARANGAY


Meaning of BARANGAY in English

Type of early Filipino settlement.

The term was derived from balangay , the sailboats that brought Malay settlers to the Philippines from Borneo. Each boat carried a family group that established a village. These villages, which sometimes grew to include 30–100 families, remained isolated from one another; the fact that no larger political grouping emerged (except on Mindanao) facilitated the 16th-century Spanish conquest. The Spanish retained the barangay as a unit of local administration.

Britannica English dictionary.      Английский словарь Британика.