Long time ago in what is now Marikina, there lived a very lovely maiden whose name is Marikit. Marikit likes beings beautiful. She amused herself with wearing pretty dresses and putting on make-up so she would look even more beautiful. Everyone including her female friends all admired her beauty.
Not far from where she lives is a small river. She would often pass by the river and everytime she did she would stop for a while and look down on the river at her own reflections on the waters. "How pretty I look!" she would often say to herself.
One Sunday morning, her female cousin invited her to go to church to hear mass. She was very excited to go and even asked her cousin to wait her while she got dressed. It didn't take her very long to dress up though it took her quite sometime just putting on the make-up. She couldn't seem to get it done and didn't realize what time it was. Her cousin kept calling out to her to speed up since the mass was about to begin, but still she wouldn't come out. Finally, she entered her room and saw Marikit still fixing her hair in front of the dressing table. "Come on, you're very pretty already!" she spoke alarmingly, then dragged her out of the house.
As they had to pass by the river in going to church, Marikit thought she look at herself just once more. As they got to the bank of the river, Marikit suddenly stopped to look at herself. She began to admire herself like always. She even turned to her cousing and asked, "Am I really beautiful?"
"You're very, very beautiful already! Let's move on! Otherwise, we'll be late!" yelled her cousin who tried once more to drag her along.
But Marikit just pushed her aside and just kept right on amusing herself with arranging the ring of flowers she had around her head. Seeing there was little she could do, her cousin decided to leave and left her there on the riverbank.
It had been sometime Marikit hadn't move an inch, still standing on the edge of the riverbank looking down at her image reflected on the waters. She was so engrossed with her beautiful looks that she wasn't even aware that dark clouds have started to moved into the sky overlooking the river. Then without even a warning, rain began to pour heavily on all sides. When she tought of leaving it was already to late. Mud formed quickly that she found it difficult to move around. A wind swept by, so hard it knocked her over into the swelling river. She yelled for help but no one could hear her.
By the time the typhoon has passed, she was already carried away by the water and had drowned to her death. Her body remains was found washed away into the other side of the riverbank. Though confirmed dead, she remained beautiful to the onlookers. To remember her by, the towns people had the river named after her. Originally, they had the river named "Marikit ka na" which means "your beautiful already!", the pet phrase by which they used to tease her about with loving affection for she was as sweet as she was pretty. In recent times, the small river had become a big river, while its name has been shortened to "Marikina". Incidentally the entire municipality was also named after her.