GAI PILAN
When the moon underwent an eclipse and turned blood red last January 31, a man from Luta told me that the old people have a saying : gai pilan.
The prefix gai means "to have" and when joined to another word it modifies the first vowel in that word if the first vowel is an A, O or U. So when gai is joined to pulan, pulan becomes pilan. Gai pilan.
There are at least three meanings of the word pulan.
The first is the moon. That leads to the next meaning. A month is basically from new moon to new moon, so "month" is pulan. Even in English, the word "month" is connected to the word "moon."
Finally, pulan can also mean "to watch over," as when someone watches over a baby, or guarding a house, or to watch over a sick person. We can only speculate why our ancestors used the word for "moon" for "watch over." Maybe it's because, in the darkness of night, the moon guides our path in the darkness when the moon's light is full.
So, gai pilan can mean....
A woman's menstrual period. Even the English word menstrual is connected to the Latin word for "month" which is mensis. So when a woman is going through that time of the month (pulan), people can say of her gai pilan.
When someone is mentally "off." All over the world, all across different time periods, people have associated mental illness with the moon. Many people believed in the moon's effect on people's moods, mental states, fertility and so on. The English words lunacy and lunatic come from the Latin word for "moon" or luna. Many mentally ill people were pictured staring or even howling at the moon.
So, when someone is mentally "off," as perceived by others, people can say that the "off" person is gai pilan. Somehow the moon has affected that person's mental state.
PULAN
Pulan is found, in many variations, in dozens of other Austonesian languages, meaning "moon."
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ENGLISH
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MOON
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CHAMORRO
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PULAN
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INDONESIAN (BAHASA)
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BULAN
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CEBUANO
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BULAN
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ILOKANO
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BULAN
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