LOST SURNAMES : QUITONGUICO

When some of us first got to know the future Father Patrick Garcia, we learned that his middle names were Kenny and Quitonguico.

We had never heard the name Quitonguico before and wondered what it was and where it came from. In time, I learned that it was a Chamorro name and that it belonged to Fr. Pat's grandmother.

The surname disappeared, for various reasons. Fr. Pat was the last one to have it included in his full name.

INALÅHAN

The Quitonguico name goes back to the early 1800s, if not earlier.

In 1823, a Juan Quitonguico was born, but died in infancy.

A José Quitonguico of Inalåhan lived long enough to marry one Marta Chargualaf. They had two sons.

Marcos married Petra Quichocho and ended up living in Malesso'. His son Pedro died before getting married, and his only other son, Juan, married but had no children.

Pedro Quitonguico's signature in 1901

So that left it to José and Marta's only remaining son, Félix, to continue the family name. Félix, staying in Inalåhan, married Agustina Taimanglo. They had several children, including sons, but only one daughter, Amparo, seems to have had children.

Amparo was single at the time so those children would have carried the Quitonguico name, and they did, for a while at least. But, one by one, the children adopted other surnames, keeping Quitonguico as a middle name in some cases.

Amparo had a daughter Engracia, who eventually added Palomo as her surname. She then married a Garcia and her grandson, the future Father Patrick, was given the middle name Quitonguico to honor that heritage.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

That, I'm afraid, is unknown for sure. We can theorize that the Qui in the name is Ke, meaning "to attempt to." It is found in other Chamorro surnames like Quitugua and Quichocho. But that is only an assumption.

But the -tonguico part of it is a mystery. It is possible that tongui is tongge, which is a shortening of tunokgue, which means "to come down to someone or something." The -co could be -ko, the possessive suffix meaning "my." Putting it all together, Quitonguico could be ke+tongge+ko. "My would-be coming down" or something close to that.

It's just a guess, but a good guess might get us closer to the bulls eye.