While the Philippine-born Spaniards during the 19th century began to be called 

españoles filipinos,
logically contracted to just Filipino, to distinguish them from the Spaniards born in Spain, they
themselves resented the term, preferring to identify themselves as "hijo/s del país" ("sons of the
country").[52]
In the latter half of the 19th century, illustrados, an educated class
of mestizos (both Spanish mestizos and Sangley Chinese mestizos, especially Chinese mestizos)
and indios arose whose writings are credited with building Philippine nationalism. These writings are
also credited with transforming the term Filipino to one which refers to everyone born in the
Philippines,[59][60] especially during the Philippine Revolution and American Colonial Era and the term
shifting from a geographic designation to a national one as a citizenship nationality by law.[59]
[55]
 Historian Ambeth Ocampo has suggested that the first documented use of the word Filipino to
refer to Indios was the Spanish-language poem A la juventud filipina, published in 1879 by José
Rizal.[61] Writer and publisher Nick Joaquin has asserted that Luis Rodríguez Varela was the first to
describe himself as Filipino in print.[62] Apolinario Mabini (1896) used the term Filipino to refer to all
inhabitants of the Philippines. Father Jose Burgos earlier called all natives of the archipelago
as Filipinos.[63] In Wenceslao Retaña's Diccionario de filipinismos, he defined Filipinos as follows,[64]
todos los nacidos en Filipinas sin distincion de origen ni de raza.
All those born in the Philippines without distinction of origin or race.

— Wenceslao E. Retaña, Diccionario De Filipinismos: Con La Revisión De Lo Que Al Respecto

Lleva Publicado La Real Academia Española
American authorities during the American Colonial Era also started to colloquially use the
term Filipino to refer to the native inhabitants of the archipelago, [65] but despite this, it became the
official term for all citizens of the sovereign independent Republic of the Philippines, including non-
native inhabitants of the country as per the Philippine Nationality Law.[52] However, the term has been
rejected as an identification in some instances by minorities who did not come under Spanish
control, such as the Igorot and Muslim Moros.[52][55]
The lack of the letter "F" in the 1940-1987 standardized Tagalog alphabet (Abakada) caused the
letter "P" to be substituted for "F", though the alphabets and/or writing scripts of some non-Tagalog
ethnic groups included the letter "F". Upon official adoption of the modern, 28-letter  Filipino alphabet
in 1987, the term Filipino was preferred over Pilipino.[citation needed] Locally, some still use "Pilipino" to refer
to the people and "Filipino" to refer to the language, but in international use "Filipino" is the usual
form for both.
A number of Filipinos refer to themselves colloquially as "Pinoy" (feminine: "Pinay"), which is a slang
word formed by taking the last four letters of "Filipino" and adding the diminutive suffix "-y".
In 2020, the neologism Filipinx appeared; a demonym applied only to those of Filipino heritage in the
diaspora and specifically referring to and coined by Filipino-Americans [citation needed] imitating Latinx, itself
a recently coined gender-inclusive alternative to Latino or Latina. An online dictionary made an entry
of the term, applying it to all Filipinos within the Philippines or in the diaspora. [66] In actual practice,
however, the term is unknown among and not applied to Filipinos living in the Philippines,
and Filipino itself is already treated as gender-neutral. The dictionary entry resulted in confusion,
backlash and ridicule from Filipinos residing in the Philippines who never identified themselves with
the foreign term.[67][68]
Native Filipinos were also called Manilamen (or Manila men) or Tagalas by English-speaking
regions during the colonial era. They were mostly sailors and pearl-divers and established
communities in various ports around the world. [69][70] One of the notable settlements of Manilamen is
the community of Saint Malo, Louisiana, founded at around 1763 to 1765 by escaped slaves and
deserters from the Spanish Navy.[71][72][73][74] There were also significant numbers of Manilamen
in Northern Australia and the Torres Strait Islands in the late 1800s who were employed in the pearl
hunting industries.[75][76]
In Latin America (especially in the Mexican states of Guerrero and Colima), Filipino
immigrants arriving to New Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries via the Manila galleons were
called chino, which led to the confusion of early Filipino immigrants with that of the much
later Chinese immigrants to Mexico from the 1880s to the 1940s. A genetic study in 2018 has also
revealed that around one-third of the population of Guerrero have 10% Filipino ancestry.