Lakan

 ( Indigenous Culture Of The Tagalog People ) 

Rajah and lakan: It is sometimes argued that since the titles "rajah" and "lakan" are roughly equivalent, the two should not be used together. Thus, referring to Lakandula as Rajah Lakandula is said to be the result of mistaking Lakandula to be the full proper name of the said king.

In his book, Tagalog Borrowings and Cognates (2024), linguist Jean-Paul Potet lists the word 'laka' as the possible earlier form of the title; the added 'n' is a shortened '-ng', a descriptive linker that is a contraction of the word 'nang/ng'. The man Dula is described as a 'laka' in the phrase, "laka na Dula", which becomes "Lakang Dula" contracted further to 'Lakandula", meaning the Chief who is Dula. The cognate identified for 'laka' is the Javanese word 'raka', which means 'lord', "the highest-ranking ruler of a region comprising several communities" in pre-Hinduist Java. Hindi influences brought the title 'raja' to the Philippines. Perhaps from the Spanish colonists' lack of knowledge and/or interpretation of Tagalog,'lakan' was believed to be the word for highest chief starting from the Spanish period. This probable 'mistake' is akin to the contemporary use of the word 'barong' instead of the grammatically correct 'baro', as an abbreviation of the phrase 'barong Tagalog'; the latter is a contraction of the descriptive phrase, 'baro na Tagalog', which means 'shirt that is Tagalog (or worn by the Tagalogs)'. The proper word for shirt is 'baro', but the use of the word 'barong' as if it were a stand-alone noun has become widespread and mainstream.

• Lakandula (later christened as Don Carlos Lacandola), ruler of Tondo when the Spanish conquest of Luzon began.
• Lakan Tagkan, ruler of Namayan.

The name of Malacañan Palace, the official residence of the president of the Republic of the Philippines, is traditionally attributed to the phrase may lakan diyan, or "the king or resides there".