26/03/2022
In 1607, Morong was established when the Order of Augustinian Recollects built a church in a small populated village in Bataan. The original site of the church was said to have been in Barangay Nagbalayong, a village southeast of Morong. The orderly rectangular layout of the streets and roads of Nagbalayong Proper is attributable to the rural planning efforts of the AOR.
In the mid 1800s, the municipal center was moved to a more central location relative to other barangays. This new central barangay was named Poblacion and was given a similar rural planning design to Nagbalayong, wherein the streets are arranged in an orderly rectangular pattern. A significantly larger church was also built in Poblacion.
The oldest records about Morong was written by the Augustian Order of Recollects (AOR) and the town always had been referred to as Moron as far back as 1607. There is no evidence that the town was ever named or referred to as Bayandati. Nagbalayong was only colloquially referred to as Bayandati, owing to the transfer of the town proper from Nagbalayong to Poblacion.
Folkloric tradition alludes the etymology of the name Moron to the Spaniards' mishearing of the phrase "mga Moro umurong" when they asked the local people the name of their village. While there are many records of Muslim led slave-raiding expeditions in the 18th and 19th Century, there is no historical record substantiating this claim. The problem of slave raiding did however influence the architecture of the Morong Church, which was built as a church-fortress.
The most probable etymology comes from the Spanish word morón which refers to a hill which can be seen from the sea. Several towns in Spain and in Spanish colonies are also named Morón, namely Morón in Cuba; Morón de la Fronterra in Sevilla, Spain; and Morón in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to name a few. These place all have hilly topographies and are nearby the ocean.
On June 10, 1955, with the understanding of the Spanish language waning in most of the Philippines and with Moron having an unfortunate meaning in English, the town was renamed Morong by virtue of Republic Act No. 1249
