Giatay Meaning

If words were tangible, “giatay” is a Matryoshka doll—slap it to any sentence, and no Visayan speaker would bat an eye. Surrounded by a Cebuano family, it’s one I’ve often heard shrieked at the most random moments—in clumsy slip-ups, thrilled squeals or really, just for the heck of it.

He points out, too, that the palm, and the sole of the foot is the atay ng paa in Tagalog, and atay-atay in Cebuano. In so many words then, atay is central, almost like the soul (yes, the soul of a foot and of a hand), maybe, even our very being. The liver figures prominently in our folklore as a favored delicacy for the predatory aswang.

They have the suffix “-hati” which in Malay means the liver (although sometimes it’s also interchanged with the heart). Dalamhati, sadness, combines dalam (inside) and hati, to mean literally “inside the liver.” On the other hand, lualhati is from lual (outside); so sadness is what is inside the liver and joy is what is outside.