Historically, a barangay is a relatively small community of around 50 to 100 families. Most villages have only thirty to one hundred houses and the population varies from one hundred to five hundred persons. According to Legazpi, he found communities with twenty to thirty people only. Many coastal villages in the Visayan region consisted of no more than eight to ten houses. The word itself is derived from an ancient Malay boat called a balangay. It is commonly believed that in pre-colonial Philippines, each original coastal “barangay” formed as a result of settlers arriving by boat from other places in Southeast Asia.