For the nth time, Bayambang is not Bayombong!

For the nth time, Bayambang is not Bayombong!

What an oft-mistaken place this town is!

I once applied online for my university transcript of record, with my Bayambang address as the destination. The package ended up in -- guess where -- Nueva Vizcaya. In Bayombong, to be exact. I won't name the offending courier service, but it was such a hassle because I was beating a very important deadline for submitting the required document.

The incident reminded me that, once upon a time, I stumbled upon an architectural photo exhibit at SM Bicutan, which got me excited, architecture being more than a passing interest of mine. What would greet me among the exhibits was a picture of something that's intimately familiar to me: my school's main building in the typical Gabaldon style of the American colonial era. The familiar pillars (sturdily built) and arches (wide) were dead giveaways, but when I looked closer at the caption, I was appalled to see a blatant error in geography. Bayambang town, the caption indicated, was now in Nueva Ecija, and I, a native of that town, was not duly informed.

Bayambang once again was apparently mistaken for Bayombong, just like many times before. And though I was instantly brought back to old memories of my early school years, as much as I was flooded with pleasant feelings, I was also reminded of other such confused pairings in Philippine geography.

Recently a speaker the LGU had invited for a talk during the event dubbed as Negosyo Summit unconsciously kept on referring to the town either as Bamban or Bambang -- and nobody among the audience seemed to be bothered about it one bit.

Bayambang, after all, is often mistaken not just for Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya, if not Bamban, Tarlac, or Bambang, Nueva Vizcaya, and Bambang LRT station in Manila. On the interwebs, Bayambang is often auto-corrected to Battambang, a city in Cambodia. As a loyal native of the place, I find it offensive, of course, or at least annoying. Bayambang may not be as well-known a place as the latter, but it has a right to exist in online texts side by side other geographic names, doesn't it?

Bayambang certainly is not alone in its little 'misfortune.' Bayombong itself suffers from this problem of mistaken identity. Google "Bayambang, Nueva Vizcaya" and results will yield at least a couple of historical references carrying the glaring error:

But with Bamban, Bambang, and Battambang adding to the confusion on top of Bayombong, what's a native to do, but perhaps embrace the tendency for mistaken identity. To make matters worse, there is this lesson I learned while trawling through the Internet for materials on our town: Bayambang may sometimes be referred to, wrongly, as Bayambong, Bayanbang, Bayamban, Bayangbang, and so on. To complicate matters even further, there is a barangay in Infanta town of Pangasinan with exactly the same name. Good thing Balamban, Cebu is too far away in the mind of the people of Luzon to ever mistake it for Bayambang.

At least Bayambang is not being called Bembang yet, which should make it even worse. Bembang is Tagalog slang for being scolded in a cutting way -- and there are at least two other unsavory connotations that I'd rather leave fellow Bayambangueños to discover for themselves.

url: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/Army/USMA/Cullums_Register/2825*.html