The history of the Filipino language is quite long and much more than I can go into here, which means the history of this language is incredibly interesting. When Spanish Colonial rule ended in the early 20th century, a movement arose for a national language in order to promote unity and national identity. In 1937, the National Language Institute decided that Tagalog would be the basis for which this language was created. In 1959, this language was called Pilipino. In 1972, when English and Pilipino were decaled official languages of the Philippines, and Filipino, "as the new national language to be developed from the contributions of all the languages spoken in the Philippines". To read more about this fascinating language, Click Here and Here.