Manong (Mah-noh-ng) is an Ilokano term principally given to the first-born male in a Filipino nuclear family. However, it can also be used to title an older brother, older male cousin, or older male relative in an extended family. The feminine "manang" is a term given to an older sister. It is a term of respect, similar but secondary to Dad or Mom, but not comparable to Mister or Ma'am, which expresses no elevated affection. A hierarchical marker, it is used to refer to any male who is older than the speaker within his or her family but it could also be used for men outside the family to convey respect. Additionally, the male partner of an older sibling may be referred to as a manong irrespective of the speaker's age relative to the partner (i.e., a male younger than the speaker may be called manong by virtue of status and not by age difference) although this is not always necessary. In traditional Filipino families, the manong acts as a third "parent" in the nuclear family and as one of the leaders in the extended family. Manong/manang is arguably the derivative of the Spanish word for brother/sister - "hermano" and "hermana". The addition of "ng" and loss of "her" could have been for a variety of reasons such as regional slang. The

Tagalog Tagalog may refer to: Language * Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines ** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language ** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language * Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Tagal ...

equivalents are the masculine kuya (koo-yah) and the feminine ate (ah-teh). Manong can also refer to the Ilocano ''manongs'', laborers who migrated to the United States to work in plantations in the 1930s. Stories of the ''manong'', Filipino migrants displaced from their homeland and faced with the racism and challenges of a foreign land, is a common theme in many Filipino-American writers' works. These include most prominently,

Carlos Bulosan Carlos Sampayan Bulosan (November 24, 1913 – September 11, 1956) was an English-language Filipino novelist and poet who immigrated to America on July 1, 1930. He never returned to the Philippines and he spent most of his life in the United St ...

(

America Is in the Heart ''America Is in the Heart'', sometimes subtitled ''A Personal History'', is a 1946 semi-autobiographical novel written by Filipino American immigrant poet, fiction writer, short story teller, and activist, Carlos Bulosan.< ...

), a Filipino migrant himself, and several stories by

Bienvenido Santos Bienvenido N. Santos (March 22, 1911 – January 7, 1996) was a Filipino-American fiction, poetry and nonfiction writer. He was born and raised in Tondo, Manila. His family roots are originally from Lubao, Pampanga, Philippines. He lived in the ...

"Scent of Apples" and "The Day the Dancers Came"). In the United States, the term has been used for the

manong generation The manong generation were the first generation of Filipino immigrants to arrive ''en masse'' to the United States. They formed some of the first Little Manila communities in the United States, and they played a pivotal role in the farmworker mo ...

, which is used to describe the first generation of Filipino emigrants to come, en masse, to the country.

References

Filipino language {{Philippines-stub