Pasig

Pasig, officially the City of Pasig (Filipino: Lungsod ng Pasig), is a highly-urbanized city in the National Capital Region of the Philippines. According to the 2024 census, it has a population of 853,050 people.

It is located along the eastern border of Metro Manila with Rizal province, the city shares its name with the Pasig River. A formerly rural settlement, Pasig is primarily residential and industrial, but has been becoming increasingly commercial in recent years, particularly after the construction of the Ortigas Center business district in its west. The city is home to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pasig, based in Pasig Cathedral, a landmark built around the same time as the town's foundation in 1573.^{[citation needed]}

Pasig was formerly part of Rizal province before the formation of Metro Manila, the national capital region of the country. The seat of government of Rizal was hosted in Pasig at the old Rizal Provincial Capitol until a new capitol was opened in Antipolo, within Rizal's jurisdiction in 2009. On June 19, 2020, President Rodrigo Duterte signed Republic Act No. 11475, which designated Antipolo as the official capital of Rizal. However, it remained as the de jure, or official capital of the province until July 7, 2020.

The city's name, Pasig, is a Tagalog word which means, "a river that flows into the sea" or "sandy bank of a river".

Etymologically, it is derived from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *pasiR. Its cognates include Tagalog dalampasigan ("shore"), Pangutaran Sama pasil ("gravel"), and Malay pasir ("beach" or "sand").

There are no surviving firsthand accounts of the history of Pasig before Spanish colonizers arrived in 1573 and established the settlement, which they called the Ciudad-Municipal de Pasig.

However, surviving genealogical records and folk histories speak of a thriving precolonial barangay on the banks of the Bitukang Manok River (now nearly extinct and known as Parian Creek), which eventually became modern-day Pasig.

The creek was given the name Bitukang Manok (Tagalog for "Chicken Gut") due to the serpentine shape of its waterway.^{[citation needed]} Among its early dwellers were Tagalogs and people from South China with origins dating back to the Ming dynasty). The Bitukang Manok was once a principal tributary of the Marikina River. The Spanish colonizers called the creek Rio de Pasig; however, the natives still called it the Bitukang Manok.