Before it was Mindanao, it had at least three other names

Before the world called it Mindanao, Europeans gave it at least three other names. In 1521, Magellan's chronicler Pigafetta wrote of a large city called Maingdanao. In 1543, the Villalobos fleet named the whole island Cesarea Karoli.

In 1560, the navigator Andrés de Urdaneta called it the Filipina Island. Spanish writers spelled it Bindanao, and Beguendanao. In the end, the local name won.

In 1905, the scholar Najeeb Saleeby wrote that Magindanao first meant the town now called Cotabato, and the land around it. He traced it to danao, a flooding by river, lake or sea. Magindanao: that which has inundation. And the land fits the name. The Rio Grande periodically overflows its banks, and floods the land around it.

Up in the highlands, ranao means a lake. It's the name given to the great upland lake, Lake Lanao. From Mindanao, what place should we tell next? Tell us in the comments.