“Pampango” refers to the people who live in the province of Pampanga. They also speak the Pampango language, which is widely known as Kapampangan.
The name of the province was coined by the early Spanish conquerors from “pangpang” or “pangpangan,” which means riverbank.
“Kapampangan” literally means “region of, or people inhabiting riverbanks.”
Pampango is the Spanish version of “Pampanga.”
The Pampango language, a member of the Malayo-Polynesian language family, endows the Pampango with their unique identity and sense of group solidarity, and distinguishes them from other ethnolinguistic groups, especially the Tagalog and the Ilocano who live beside them. However, the language is also spoken beyond the geographical boundaries of the province, notably in Tarlac.
During the prehispanic era, the Pampango used a syllabary of their own, which was later replaced by the Roman orthography introduced by the Spaniards. The Pampango-speaking population has been estimated at 1,871,000 as of 1980.
