Before the 1950s, the Polillo Group of Islands was composed of only one political subdivision, known as the "Municipality of Polillo, Quezon."  As the municipality was composed of more or less seventy (70) scattered islands, local officials found it very difficult to administer the whole area, so that before the end of the 1950s the islands were subdivided into five political subdivisions, wherein three municipalities are now located at the mainland (Polillo, Burdeos and Panukulan), and the other two are now distinct island-municipalities (Patnanongan and Jomalig).  The largest subdivision in terms of land area (28,000 hectares) and population (27,000) is of course the mother municipality, Polillo, Quezon.

As of now, there is no historically documented account as to the name of the place "POLILLO" originated.  However, two undocumented accounts exist as follows:

1.  Chinese merchants, who traded with the natives of the islands before the Spanish Occupation, named the place "PULILU."  Proponents of this account claim that the word (pulilu) means "land of plenty of food" in chinese.  The group of islands was then called Pulilu until a certain priest, named "Padre Domingo," during the Spanish regime, changed it to 'POLILLO' (pronounced as polilyo) due to the difficulty of the tongue of both natives and Spanish in pronouncing the original chinese word.

2.  When the troop of the great Spanish conqueror, Juan de Salcedo, made a stopover after a tedious exploratory expedition somewhere in the islands, a group of naughty natives had stoolen the food stocks of the sleeping spanish soldiers.  That unfavorable experience of the first Spanish troop who landed in the islands, made Salcedo to call the place "PILLO," meaning naughty in spanish.  Later, the word was pronounced as "pililyo"  then became "POLILLO" as of these days.