There are several accounts as to how the City of Parañaque got its name. One story stated that long ago, at the mouth of Parañaque River, there stood a balete tree that looked like a majestic ship. This earned it the name Palanyag, taken from the term ‘palayag’, which means “point of navigation”.

Another version of the story was that there were some natives who lived close to the Manila Bay whose main livelihood was fishing or paglalayag while the neighboring place from the east called Muntinglupa had rice farmers who were referred to as taga-Palayan. On a feast, many fishermen and rice farmers got drunk from tuba or fermented coconut wine. One farmer suggested to name the whole place Palayan as a sign of cooperation and good will between them. However, a fisherman protested to name it Palalayag instead. As a compromise, they agreed to merge these two words and came up with Palalanyag. However, another drunken guest shouted, “Mabuhay ang Palanyag at ang mga taga-Palanyag!” The rest liked this word better and ever since called the place Palanyag.

In another story, during the colonization of the Spaniards, some soldiers riding a horse-drawn carriage asked to be taken to a certain place. However, the coachman did not understand the Spanish soldier’s pronunciation. One of the soldiers said, “Para aqui, Para aqui” meaning, “Stop here, stop here.” The coachman did not understand and kept going whereas the soldier also repeated his instruction, “Para aqui, Para aqui”. The coachman left the carriage and told the townspeople that, “These Spaniards are repeatedly saying para aniya ake… para aniya ake” to which the townspeople just laughed. The incident circulated and was repeated around for days and the term para aniya ake stuck.