HOW DO YOU SAY "MAYOR" IN CHAMORRO?

In 1990, the Commissioners of our villages on Guam were given a new title : Mayor. 

Now, we live in a period where people often ask, "How do you say that in Chamorro?" Government agencies, I believe, are required to have a Chamorro version of their entity's name. So, after the name change in 1990 from Commissioner to Mayor, people started to ask, "How do you say 'mayor' in Chamorro?"

What's the answer?

Well, you could go back to the old Chamorro word for "mayor," which most people have forgotten. Or, you can invent a new Chamorro word for "mayor," since so few people seemed to remember the old.

ATKÅTDE

That's the old word for "mayor."

It's borrowed from the Spanish word for "mayor," which is alcalde, because our people didn't have mayors until the Spaniards took over.

Before the Spaniards, we had maga'låhe, "great men," the head of villages.

But, when the Spaniards did away with the ancient chiefs in each village, the word maga'låhe became applied to only one person, the Spanish governor of all the Marianas.

As for the heads of the individual districts, at times he was called the alcalde, and at other times the gobernadorcillo, or "little governor," in Spanish. Saipan, Tinian and Luta at times was headed by an alcalde.

So, 100 plus years ago, when a Chamorro thought of the position "mayor," they used the word atkåtde, or in Luta atkåde, from the Spanish word alcalde.

Look at this pre-war lápida (grave stone) written in Chamorro of a former mayor of Saipan, Juan de los Reyes. It says,

Este na lugar nai ma 

hafot i tatautau i hagas

Alcalden Saipan as

Juan de los Reyes

This place is buried

the body of the former

Mayor of Saipan

Juan de los Reyes

You see? "Mayor" in Chamorro is atkåtde. Although in this old grave stone they keep the Spanish spelling.

BUT, TIME GOES ON AND WE FORGET

But then the Americans took over Guam in 1899 and a new political structure replaced the Spanish.

In Guam, the Americans installed village commissioners, not mayors. Chamorros back then didn't bother to find a Chamorro name for "commissioner." They didn't feel the need to. Komishana was just fine, the Chamorro way of pronouncing "commissioner."

We've been calling them "commissioner" so long, since the early 1900s, that Guam Chamorros, on the whole, forgot the word atkåtde. It just didn't exist for them anymore.

AND SO WE INVENTED SOMETHING NEW

So, by 1990, when people wanted to find a Chamorro word for "mayor," having forgotten atkåtde, they invented something new.

They took the English word "mayor" and tried to make it sound Chamorro. How they decided that making it mahot makes "mayor" sound Chamorro, I do not know. It's a word without a historical foundation. Someone took the English word and played with it.

Some people disagreed and said mayot is a better version. The difficulty with this is that there already is a Chamorro word mayot, and it means "major" or "main" as in i mayot påtte, the major or main portion.

And to show you how far we can go when we have lost our older foundation, someone even made it manhot.

Up in the Northern Marianas, the Japanese who arrived in 1914 did away with local government. But, after World War II, when the Northern Marianas were under the United Nations Trusteeship entrusted to the US, the position of mayor came back for the individual islands. To this day there is a mayor of Saipan, Tinian, Luta and the Northern Islands. Most people just use the English word "mayor," even when speaking Chamorro. But older people understand atkåtde. In the Northern Marianas, atkåtde (or atkåde in Luta) was in use in the 1950s all the way up to just recently.

SO HOW DO YOU SAY "MAYOR" IN CHAMORRO?

There are two answers.

The traditional, but mainly forgotten, word atkåtde. The word historically used in all the Marianas.

Or, as far as Guam was concerned in 1990, make up a new one. Like mahot.