In many, if not most of the languages in the Philippines, proper nouns, such as personal names, are tagged with a marker that determines their grammatical role within a sentence. For Tagalog and the Visayan languages , this includes si to mark the proper noun as the actor or subject (nominative case), ni to mark the proper noun as an owner (genitive case), and kay to mark the proper noun as the object, i.e. the one that is acted upon (dative case). All of these also have plural forms — sina, nina and kina respectively — and unlike in the biblical languages or in English, the plural form has to be used when only a single proper name is mentioned but implicitly that proper name includes more than just one.

In this verse, where English translates “Lot (arrived in Zoar),” the Tagalog translation translates “sina Lot” because the context of the text makes clear that Lot was not alone. (Source: Kermit Titrud)