Short answer. Usually yes. An imperfect description, or one that no property exactly answers, does not by itself defeat the gift. The mistake can be corrected where the error appears from the context of the will or from extrinsic evidence, so long as the property meant can be identified without relying on the testator's spoken statements.
What the law says
When there is an imperfect description, or when no person or property exactly answers the description, mistakes and omissions must be corrected, if the error appears from the context of the will or from extrinsic evidence, excluding the oral declarations of the testator as to his intention
Civil Code, Article 789 — Curing Ambiguities. Read the full provision →
A wrong description is not automatically fatal
Article 789 assumes that wills contain slips and provides for curing them rather than voiding the gift. When there is an imperfect description, or when no person or property exactly answers the description, mistakes and omissions must be corrected, if the error appears from the context of the will or from extrinsic evidence. So a gift of "my house on Rizal Street" is not lost because the house actually stands on the next street, if the property the testator meant can still be pinned down. A false or inexact label does not destroy a bequest where the thing intended remains identifiable.
The two defects the article addresses
The provision covers two related problems. The first is an imperfect description, where the will names the property but gets some detail wrong, a mistaken street, an incorrect lot number, an outdated area. The second is where no property exactly answers the words used, so that nothing in the estate is a perfect match. In both, the task is the same: work out what the testator was pointing at. The description is treated as a signpost to a specific asset, and a signpost with a smudge on it can still point the right way if the surrounding facts make the destination clear.
What may be used to correct it
The correction is drawn from the context of the will itself and from extrinsic evidence about the surrounding facts, the properties the testator actually owned, their locations, how he referred to them, what fits the rest of the bequest. This is the ordinary work of resolving a latent ambiguity, one that surfaces only when the words are matched against the real world. The court is not rewriting the gift; it is reading the existing words against the facts to see which asset they were always meant to designate.
The evidence that stays out
There is a firm limit. The article corrects the description excluding the oral declarations of the testator as to his intention. Evidence of the surrounding circumstances is allowed; the testator's own reported statements about what he meant to give are not. All of this is threshed out when the will is brought for probate, so the practical step is to assemble the documentary proof of what the testator owned, titles, tax declarations, plans, and let those establish which property the imperfect words describe.