If you are thinking of the current pound-for-pound king, the Boxing Writers Association of America Fighter of the Decade and the 2009 ESPY Awards Best Fighter, then you got his name wrong.
I noticed that many people especially foreigners are still incorrectly referring to a citizen of the Philippines as a Philipino, Phillipino or Philippino. Because the spelling of Philippines begins with a “ph”, it is easily assumed that the term for a citizen must also be spelled with a “ph”. This is just like referring to someone from Portugal as Portuguese or from France as French. Well, no other country in the world begins with “ph” so this kind of confusion is unique to us. Actually, the proper term would be Filipino or Filipina (feminine).
If you are asking why Filipino instead of Philipino when the Philippines is spelled with a “ph”, the answer lies with the old name for Philippines. When the country was first colonized by Spain, they give the archipelago the name “Las Islas Filipinas” and its inhabitants “Filipinos”. When it was American’s turn to colonize the country, it was renamed “Philippines”. However, the term “Filipino” stuck.
Filipino also refers to the official language of the Philippines which is based on the Tagalog dialect.
