The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced that it will officially adopt the abbreviation "PH" in compliance with international ISO standards, eschewing the traditional and long-standing use of "RP".
In Department Order 16-10 dated Oct. 20, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo directed the DFA’s 67 embassies, 23 consulates general and four permanent missions to drop RP in favor of PH or PHL.
The ISO developed the ISO3166-1 codes for countries, territories, and special areas.
The new codes are already being used in airline ticketing, passport issuances, currencies, and internationally traded shares of stocks, among others.
In fact, most pinoy internet users are already familiar with PH that's why they believe this shouldn't be a big deal anymore. Web is surrounded with PH referring to the Philippines, all URLs ending with ".ph" are all referring to Philippine domains.
The best way to implement the use of "PH"
The best way to fully implement the use of "PH", in my opinion, and so Pinoys in general will become familiar and used to it is that the government should require all commercial media to use "PH" every time they make a headline referring to the Philippines.
As you may well observed, "RP" is very well represented in
prints and broadcasting news
headlines that's why every tabloid readers and news-hungry pinoys are getting used to see "RP".
You will see sports news headlines always goes with "RP Team", "RP golfer", "RP delegates", and the list goes on.
History of the 'RP' acronym
According to Manuel Quezon III, Undersecretary of Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning, the acronym "RP" was first popularized in 1946 following the declaration of Philippine independence.
"(It was used) after we became independent, to eliminate the colonial 'PI' or 'Philippine Islands'. Actually, under the 1935 Constitution, we formally abandoned the plural 'Philippine Islands' and adopted the unitary 'Philippines' to emphasize that we're a single country," Quezon explained.
The use of "RP" predates the establishment of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1947 in an effort to establish internationally-accepted industrial and commercial standards.
Aside from it's sound being more formal than RP (which many jokes about it relating to Halloween's RIP), we should all use PH following a code set to an international standards.
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