Parañaque

The City of Parañaque was founded on November 30th, 1572. It is one of the 16 cities making up the NCR of the Philippines. It has a land area of 47.69 km2 and has 665,822 people living in it as of the 2015 census. Parañaque is the home of the PAGCOR Entertainment City, a gaming and entertainment complex under development by the state owned Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation spanning an area of 8 km2 in Bay City, where four large integrated resorts are based namely Solaire Resort & Casino, City of Dreams Manila, Okada Manila, and the soon to be completed Westside City Resorts World. It is also the home of the Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange public transport and the Aseana City business district development which includes Ayala Malls Manila Bay.

There are several accounts as to how Parañaque got its name. One such story stated that long ago, at the mouth of what is now known as the Parañaque River, there stood a balete tree that, when viewed from afar, looked like a majestic ship. This earned it the name Palanyag, taken from the term "palayag", which means “point of navigation”.

Another version of the story was that, before the Spanish colonizers came to the Philippines, there were some natives who lived close to the Manila Bay whose main livelihood was fishing or pangingisda. On the other hand, the neighboring place from the east called Muntinlupa had rice farmers who were referred to as taga-Palayan. One day, the fishermen and rice farmers had a feast and many got drunk from tuba or fermented coconut wine. One farmer suggested that they should name the whole place Palayan as a sign of cooperation and goodwill between them. However, a fisherman protested and stated that they should name it Palalayag instead. As a compromise, they agreed to merge these two words and came up with Palalanyag. However, another drunken guest shouted, “Mabuhay ang Palanyag at ang mga taga-Palanyag!” The rest liked this word better and ever since then, the place was called "Palanyag".

In another story handed down to generations, when the Philippines was conquered by the Spaniards, some soldiers riding a horse-drawn carriage asked to be taken to a certain place. However, the coachman did not understand the Spanish soldier's pronunciation. When they arrived, one of the soldiers said, “Para aqui, Para aqui” meaning, “Stop here, stop here.” The coachman did not understand and kept going whereas the soldier also repeated his instruction, “Para aqui, Para aqui”. The coachman left the carriage and told the townspeople that, “These Spaniards are repeatedly saying para aniya ake... para aniya ake” to which the townspeople just laughed. The incident circulated and was repeated around for days and the term "Para Aniya Ake" stuck.