On “Piatos” and the meaning of “Nahuli”

In the current political climate, two minor points have assumed undue weight: the ridicule by some lawmakers of the surname “Piattos” during the impeachment discussions involving Vice President Sara Duterte, and the disputed meaning of “nahuli na” following remarks attributed to President Bongbong Marcos in connection with Zaldy Co. While “Piattos” may be questioned, records confirm the existence of the related surname “Piatos,” and both grammar and historical usage leave little doubt that “nahuli” denotes “having been caught”. In both cases, the matter is less argument than record, where evidence outweighs rhetoric.

The surname Piatos, though absent from the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos, appears in Philippine records as early as the 1860s in Luzon. Today, it remains rare, found in just six regions and 22 localities, with 130 bearers nationwide. Davao City accounts for the largest share with 51 individuals, followed by Pasig City with 23 and San Juan with 10, underscoring both its limited spread and continued presence in the country’s naming landscape.

The Tagalog word “huli” carries a dual meaning that every Filipino instinctively understands: say “huli ka na” and it means “you are late”; say “huli ka!” and it means “gotcha”. This apparent tension is not accidental but deeply rooted in the history of the language itself. One form comes from an older Austronesian form, “udehi”, meaning “to come after” or “to be last,” still reflected in related languages such as Cebuano “ulahi”, Ilocano “udi”, and Bikol “huri”. The other form traces to a separate root, “qulih” or “kulih”, meaning “to seize” or “to catch,” with parallels across the region. Over time, these two distinct forms converged in Tagalog into the single word “huli”, identical in sound but carrying different meanings depending on context.

This duality was already recognized by early lexicographers. Pedro de San Buenaventura’s “Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala” (1613), the first major dictionary of the language, clearly separated the two senses: “huli” was defined as “postrero” or “el ultimo”, while hulihin was given as “coger”, “prender”, or “asir”, meaning to “catch or seize”. This distinction continued in the influential “Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala” of Juan de Noceda and Pedro de Sanlucar (1754), which expanded the definition of “huli” to include not only “lo ultimo” but also lateness, while retaining “hulihin” for the act of capturing.

Nineteenth-century works preserved and refined this pattern. Rosalio Serrano’s “Vocabulario Tagalo-Castellano” (1854) maintained the same meanings, while Pedro Serrano’s “Laktaw’s Diccionario Tagalog-Hispano” (1889), one of the first dictionaries by a native Tagalog scholar, acknowledged the full range of the word’s usage. Laktaw not only defined “huli” as “last or late” but also included it as a noun meaning “the catch” or “prey”, and used “arrestar” as an equivalent for its legal sense. Subsequent dictionaries, including those of Antonio Sanchez de la Rosa (1893) and Sofronio G. Calderon (1915), confirmed this established mapping.

Across these centuries of documentation, a consistent pattern emerges. “Huli” on its own refers to what is last, behind, or delayed, while its verbal forms “humuli”, “hulihin”, and “mahuli” carry the sense of catching or being caught. This distinction remains clear in modern usage. Thus, “nahuli” can mean either “late” or “caught,” depending entirely on context. Far from being vague or misleading, this dual meaning is a long-standing feature of the language, recorded for over 400 years and fully understood by its speakers.

In the end, both issues return us to the same principle: neither names nor words bend easily to convenience. The surname “Piatos”, however rare, is documented and real, and cannot be dismissed simply because it does not fit a preferred narrative. Likewise, “nahuli,” grounded in centuries of usage and recorded in the earliest dictionaries of the language, carries a meaning that is neither obscure nor elastic when used in context. In an age where repetition often substitutes for proof, the task remains the same as ever --to return to the record, to the archive, and to the language itself, where facts are not argued into existence but are plainly found.