In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos code: spa promoted to code: es named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. The arrival of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer leading a fleet for Spain, marked the beginning of Spanish colonization. Adoption of animism, Hinduism and Islam established island-kingdoms called kedatuan, rajahnates, and sultanates. Negritos, some of the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, were followed by successive waves of Austronesian peoples. Manila is the country's capital, while the largest city is Quezon City both lie within the urban area of Metro Manila. The Philippines has diverse ethnicities and cultures throughout its islands. The Philippines covers an area of 300,000 km 2 (120,000 sq mi) and, as of 2021, it had a population of around 109 million people, making it the world's thirteenth-most-populous country. It shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the north, Japan to the northeast, Palau to the east and southeast, Indonesia to the south, Malaysia to the southwest, Vietnam to the west, and China to the northwest. The Philippines is bounded by the South China Sea to the west, the Philippine Sea to the east, and the Celebes Sea to the southwest.

It is situated in the western Pacific Ocean and consists of around 7,641 islands that are broadly categorized under three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The Philippines ( / ˈ f ɪ l ɪ p iː n z/ ( listen) Filipino: Pilipinas), officially the Republic of the Philippines (Filipino: Republika ng Pilipinas), is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia.

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