Talk:amihan
Etymology[edit]
I prefer to believe that the word "Amihan" refers to the island of Ami near Taiwan, whose people are called Iyami (from the prefix i- which is common from Formosa to Northern Philippines, e.g., Iluko, Itawis, Ifugaw, Igorot, Ibaloy, etc, a prefix referring to a "person from this place" similar to Tagalog taga- e.g., tagailog). As proto-Austronesian peoples migrated southwards from Formosa, they referred to seasonal north winds as Amihan or Amian "coming from the direction of Ami" where -an is a common Austronesian suffix. The Iyami were probably a more prominent culture in the region than they are today, and proto-Austronesian migrants may have had a collective memory of its general location as they moved southwards towards Luzon and Southeast Asia. 2001:4452:364:D100:216:3EFF:FE6B:23DD 09:29, 20 January 2023 (UTC)