How Baler Got Its Name

There are four different versions of how the town got its name. The first involves the simplistic story that an old woman, when asked the name of the place by the Spanish explorers, had thought they asked her name and responded, "Vale." A second version suggests that the place name's origin is the Dumagat word balid, which means "to return," and which the people of the area used to refer to a hunter or food-gatherer coming back from a foray into the nearby mountains. A third version refers to a lakan (nobleman) named
Balid who lived in the region before the Spanish coming.

In the absence of historical records, the origin of the name of a
place may be too easily conceived, imagined, and garbled. Hence we put more weight on the fourth version, which suggests that the name Baler is taken from balod, which is the indigenous name for the mountain doves or paloma montes that continue to abound the area. This, at any rate, is how the Noceda y Sanlucar Vocabulario of 1860 traces the origin of our capital town's name. By the way, our own
Institute of National Language accepts this legend as theory.

he entire coastal region of Aurora was linked ecclesiastically to the southern town of Infanta in the early years of the Spanish period. Infanta would become the biggest municipality in the main district of what was then called Kalilaya, later to become the province of Quezon. As early as 1591, the Spanish authorities had organized Kalilaya district to include large parts of what now make up the provinces of Laguna and Nueva Ecija. In 1701, Nueva Ecija was separated from Kalilaya Province and given its own local government. Around 1749, the provincial capital was in turn transferred from Kalilaya to the southern town of Tayabas.
The whole province then took on the name of Tayabas as well.

Ecclesiastically, the region was turned over to the Augustinians and Recollects in 1658, when the vanguard Friars Minor began to lack missionaries to serve the growing population. But the Franciscans regained the territory in 1703, setting up missions in Dipaculao in 1719 and in Casiguran in 1753.

In December 1735, a tromba marina, which we have learned to call a tsunami, hit Baler shortly after midnight, engulfing nearly the entire community. Members of the Angara, Bijasa, Bitong, Carrasco, Lumasac, and Poblete families survived the great waves by scrambling to higher ground together with the parish priest of Casiguran, who had been visiting the town. The survivors swam their way up the hill overlooking Point Baja, now known as Ermita Hill. The neighboring villages of Casiguran, Dipaculao, and Dingalan were spared from the catastrophe.

The Baler community rebuilt its village, with some of the survivors bravely returning to the delta area, which they from then on called kinagunasan-devastated. Others resettled in a new site that eventually became the Baler poblacion.

Another tragedy struck Baler in 1798, when Balangingi pirates sailed from Ticao and Burias in Southern Luzon and raided coastal towns of Tayabas, including Baler. Three Franciscan priests and 450 residents lost their lives.