THE MEANING OF PANGELINAN

 

The late Chamorro singer from Saipan, Frank "Bokonggo" Pangelinan

For years I knew that the surname Pangelinan came from three men on Guam identified in the list of soldiers from Pampanga in the 1700s.  But for all those years I never knew what Pangelinan meant in the Pampanga language.  The Spaniards spelled local names in a variety of ways, in both the Marianas and the Philippines, so Pangelinan (the present Chamorro way) and Pangilinan (the Pampanga way) are just two versions of the same name.

To this day, there are Pangilinans in Pampanga and one of them moved to Guam more recently and became a household name, Mark Pangilinan the businessman.

Just a few days ago, I asked a dedicated advocate of the Pampanga culture and language, Satcheil Macasias Amamangpang, what Pangilinan meant in his language.

He directed me to a Spanish dictionary of words from Pampanga, Diego Bergaño's Vocabulario de la Lengua Pampanga en Romance (1860).  There we find that pangilin means to abstain from something.  Pangilinan (notice the suffix -an, which we also have in Chamorro, meaning the "place of" or "time of" some action or object) was the day of abstaining or the thing itself which was avoided.  Eventually, pangilinan came to refer to abstinence from certain foods for religious reasons, such as the Lenten abstinence.

Connected with this idea of avoiding certain things is the idea of remaining pure, sanctified; free from human contact.  Pangilinan, thus,  is thought of as  "He who is not to be touched by human hands or seen by the human eye."

AN AMERICAN GETS A NICKNAME

US Marines on Guam
1899

Chamorros love to give nicknames to others, and sometimes even an American will get one.

Before the war, an American Marine officer was in charge of some local men.  The Marines at the time doubled as the police department on Guam.

This one officer had both a strong Southern accent and a lisp.  So he had trouble saying the name of one of his men, Cerilo.

Whenever the officer had to call on Cerilo, "Shirley" came out instead.

So guess what the Chamorros called this American Marine?  Yes, "Shirley."

Chamorros will take your most obvious defect, your most unforgettable mistake or most prominent physical feature and make a nickname out of it.

Luckily, perhaps, for "Shirley," he got his marching orders and was assigned elsewhere - where he wouldn't be called "Shirley."

CHAMORRO LESSON VIA CHRISTMAS CARD

Always nice to get a letter or card entirely written in Chamorro; a rarity nowadays.  Perhaps this can be instructional for some.  I'll transcribe it here exactly as the writer penned it :

Puedi i Pasgua-mu pågu na såkkan inecha ni bendision i Niño Jesus, Santa Maria & Yu'us tåta, ya i nuebu na såkkan hinatmi ni gråsian Yu'us, bendision-ña, ma'åse'-ña yan minagof.  Si Yu'us Ma'åse' put i bonitun card Påsgua ni un hanågue ham kåda såkkan.

Rather than translate the card entirely, I'll explain most of the terms and see if you would like to render your own version.

Puedi - from the Spanish word "poder" which means "to be able to."  Chamorros use it to mean "may," "it may," even "hopefully."  And one Spanish informant tells me some Spaniards also use the word in this sense, as well as the principal meaning of "can, is able to."

Påsgua - from the Spanish.  Pascua was any one of several church feasts.  In the Marianas, Påsgua usually means Christmas, but it can also be used for Easter and Pentecost.  I have a post on this and can access that by searching the word on this blog.

På'go - now, this moment, today

Såkkan - year, but also harvest

Echa - for the Spanish "echar" which can mean many things but in this case Chamorros use it to mean "cast on, extend to, shower over."

Bendision - blessing; again, a Spanish loan word.

Niño Jesus - Child Jesus, Infant Jesus

Santa Maria - Blessed Virgin Mary

Yu'us tåta - God the Father

Nuebu - from the Spanish "nuevo," or "new"

Håtme - to be penetrated, filled with

Gråsia - from the Spanish "gracia" which we use to mean "grace"

Ma'åse' - can mean mercy, kindness, benevolence

Magof - happy, joyful

Put - from the Spanish "por" which can mean "on account of, through the agency of, by way of" and is used in many other ways.

Bonitu - from the Spanish "bonito," meaning "pretty, handsome."

Hanågue - from the root word hånao, meaning "to go."  Hanågue means "to send."

IS THIS CHAMORRO?  OR SPANISH?

This is "modern" Chamorro.  Our pre-contact ancestors wouldn't be able to understand this card very much; it is full of Spanish loan words.  But a Spaniard also would scratch his or her head a bit, though s/he would recognize many, if not half, of the terms.  But a Spaniard who didn't speak Chamorro could not translate this; s/he could only point to the words and translate them, sometimes with difficulty.

Take inecha, for example.  The root word is echa, which we took from the Spanish echar.  But we use it employing our grammatical rules, in this case, using the IN infix.  A Spaniard would be clueless about this and would probably not even catch that inecha is actually a Chamorro form of their verb echar.

The writer also uses one English word, card.  She could have used kåtta, except that kåtta is understood to mean letter (on paper), not a card.  But the word kåtta is also from the Spanish carta, which can mean "letter" but also "card" as in poker.  We Chamorros could use kåtta also for card, but only if people pick up the usage.  Language is a matter of convention.

Even the language I am using now and which you are reading - English - has gone through several reincarnations.  Ever try listening to Shakespeare?  Or reading Chaucer?  Or, further back, the Old English which was largely built on a Germanic foundation?  We moderns can barely understand the English of 900 years ago.  English has borrowed heavily from a development of a Latin language, Norman French.  Yet, it remains the English language; i.e. the language of the people of England.

Yes, this is Chamorro; the language of the indigenous people of the Marianas, no matter how much it has borrowed from Spanish and now even from English.  But just as we differentiate between Old, Middle and Modern English (and many smaller categories besides), we have to differentiate between Chamorro as it is and was spoken in its different phases.

Lastly, one cannot assume that, even before contact with Europeans, the language spoken by our ancestors was frozen and static.  A Chamorro of the 500s CE may have had some difficulty understanding perfectly a Chamorro of the 1400s CE.   Human speech evolves, even without outside influence.

SPELLING

The writer spells in a way that differs from my way of spelling.  Did it really matter to me?  Not at all.  I understood what she was saying, as she would have understood me with my kind of spelling.

We're a long way off till the day we all spell Chamorro the same way, just as people spell in English differently.  Not convinced?  Read people's Facebook pages!

Right now, my opinion is we serve language preservation more by focusing on getting people to speak it. When we help form a new generation of fluent speakers, we might be able to get (some) uniform spelling accomplished; not by law, but by the proficiency of the speakers adopting a common orthography. Language is a matter of convention.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE CHAMORRO WHEN....

You wear all your religious medals on one safety pin on the outside of your dress.

Of course, many other countries, especially those which were once under the Spanish flag, do the same, but this was a very common thing among Chamorro women in the not too distant past.

The idea of putting all the medals on one single safety pin might be more seen among us, though am sure it happens elsewhere.

That Chamorro women started early in colonial times wearing religious medals and beads is attested to in these scenes from the early 1800s, when Chamorro women still liked to smoke homemade cigars made from locally-grown tobacco :

A religious medal is called a melåya in Chamorro.  Melåya is the Chamorro pronunciation of the Spanish word medalla, meaning "medal."

The LL in Spanish is sounded like a Y, which, in Chamorro, sounds like a DZ.

Chamorro tends to prefer L in place of D and N.  Natilla in Spanish, for example, beomes latiya in Chamorro.  Naranjita in Spanish becomes lalanghita in Chamorro.  So, medalla became melåya.

Chamorro women were so wont to wear these melåya all bundled up this way, on the outside of their dresses or sometimes on their inner undershirt.

When these women were inpatients in hospital, the melåya would often interfere with tubes and wires attached to the women, but not the sternest nurse could get the women to take them off.  All the more reason, they said, to wear the melåya when they were sick in the hospital.

SPANISH THE CHAMORRO WAY : RUSSIANS

Russian tourists have been flooding Saipan for some time now and are now becoming a common sight in Tumon.

How does one say "Russian" in Chamorro?

Usually, we borrow the term for foreign nationalities and races from the Spanish.  A Chinese person is called "Chino" in Chamorro, which we borrowed from the Spanish.

A Spaniard is an "Españot," which is "Español," pronounced in the Chamorro way.  An "American" is "Amerikåno," and so forth.

But we sometimes differ from the Spaniards, even when we create our own term and make it sound Spanish.  Case in point, "Russian."

In Spanish, a Russian is a ruso.

But Chamorros say Rusiåno, which sounds Spanish enough.

Russians were such a rarity in Spanish times that Chamorros didn't need to identify Russian things very often, so that might explain why we didn't borrow ruso and make it our own term.

We learned that adding O at the end of English words, more or less, could make them Spanish-sounding, and thus more Chamorro-sounding.  Take, "document" or "pilot," for example.  They easily become dokumento and piloto in Chamorro by adding an O at the end.  So, "Russian" becomes Rusiåno, whereas Spaniards say ruso.

RUSSIANS IN THE MARIANAS

In the early 1800s, a Russian expedition visited the Marianas under the command of Otto von Kotzebue.  Though ethnically German himself, his officers and crew included Russians, besides Russian Germans as well.

In 1870, another Russian ship visited Apra Harbor.  The Spanish priest of Hagåtña went on board and had a visit.

There may have been, almost certainly, at least a few other Russian ships who visited the Marianas in her history.

A WHITE RUSSIAN ON SAIPAN

VLADIMIR OSMOLOVSKY OF SAIPAN

When Russia fell to the Communists in 1917, the anti-Communists fled as much as they could.  They were called "White Russians" as opposed to the Communist "Reds."

Many who lived in the eastern part of the Russian Empire, in Asia, fled to Japan.  When Saipan and Micronesia became Japanese territory in 1914, these islands were open to them for settling, as well.

One Vladimir Osmolovsky, who had once been police chief in Vladivostok, took up residence in Saipan during Japanese times.  He became a shop keeper.  He lived on Saipan all the way into the war, and was detained by the Americans in the civilian camp after the invasion. He died in Saipan in 1949.

 

TRETNOFF

Though they lived in Yap, the Tretnoff family, another group of White Russians, would have been in contact with the Chamorros living in Yap before World War II.  In fact, the Tretnoffs were good friends with a Chamorro lady, Filomena Untalan, who had married a Filipino, Agapito Hondonero.  All the Hondonero family were killed by the Japanese during the war.  The Japanese suspected that Hondonero was a spy.

KÅNTAN CHAMORRITA

Båsta nåna de tumånges

sa' un na' lache karerå-ho;

yan maolek-ña yo' gi langet

ke i tano' na sagå-ho.

 

Stop your crying, mother,

because you will make me stray from my path;

for I am better off in heaven

than in my earthly place.

 

There are several Kåntan Chamorrita verses in which the speaker, still alive, speaks to someone about their impending death, even if that death might be decades from now.

 

Perhaps it was due to some (many?) Chamorros lingering thoughts on the nearness of death.  Epidemics were not unknown, which wiped out large numbers of people.

 

I wonder, even, if this might be due to some of the young men's propensity to get on whaling ships and leave Guam as fast they could.  Many, if not most, never returned.  As late as 1941, I know of mothers and aunties weeping over a son's joining the US Navy as if they had just been told he had died.  Perhaps this was the young man's way of saying his joining the whaling ships might mean they would never see him again on earth, but that they would be together again, and more happy, in heaven.

 

The line about a mother's weeping is interesting.  For a young man seriously contemplating leaving the island for the big world, by joining the foreign ships, hearing his mother cry at the idea might make him change his mind and stray from his path.

 

Or, perhaps, for the soul which has departed the earth in death, to see his mother crying over his dead body will make him feel remorse and disturb his smooth journey to the next life.

 

Those two things stand out, for sure, in this verse, concerning the old Chamorro mentality.  A mother's tears were strong enough to seriously affect a child's future.  And that heaven was a better future than anything on earth.

FAMILY NICKNAMES : POTPOT

Potpot na lepblo!

A thick book!

Some of the Mendiolas in the Marianas are known as the Potpot family.

Potpot means "thick."

The Potpot branch in Yoña is very well known.  They are the descendants of Antonio Fejeran Mendiola of Hagåtña (before the war) and his wife Juliana de la Cruz.

Other Mendiolas better-known-as Potpot are the descendants of Mariano Borja Mendiola and his wife Antonia Guerrero Pangelinan.

The family members I have spoken to do not know why their clan is called Potpot.  Of course, if any family member would like to contact me and let me know what they know, please do so.

It's important that people understand that potpot does not mean yommok.  Yommok means "fat" or "overweight."

Neither does it mean pokpok.  Pokpok means "swollen."

Here are some things that can be considered potpot :

Potpot na alunan

A thick pillow

Potpot na pedåson kåtne

A thick piece of beef

Potpot na toåya

Thick towels

HINENGGEN I MAN ÅMKO' : AN DURU I ICHAN

Again, not all the mañaina said this, but some people have told me they heard it growing up :

An duru i ichan, maolek, sa' pinino' i manglo'.

(When it rains hard, it's good, because it kills the wind.)

The idea was that the rain stopped the wind from picking up, thus preventing a typhoon, which nobody ever wants.

At the same time, other people told me a different version :

An duru i hilu, yan tettete i ichan, maolek, sa' pinino' i manglo'.

(When it thunders a lot, and the rain is light, it's good, because it kills the wind.)

It's up to you what you want to hold as true!

GROWING UP IN HARUTA MURA DURING THE WAR

The other day I met up with some mañaina, one of whom happened to grow up in Barrigada during the war.  My own family, who lived in Hagåtña before the war, spent the Japanese occupation at their ranch in Barrigada as well.  This woman knew my family, and was around the same age as my mother.

Barrigada was called Haruta Mura by the Japanese.

Haruta means "empty rice field" and mura is "village."  It would make sense that Barrigada was an empty rice field because they grew corn there, not rice!

There was one school house in Barrigada, across the San Roque chapel and near the bomban hånom (water pump) which was accessible to everyone.  This was in what is now called Radio Barrigada.

There were two teachers, both Chamorros who had been trained intensively in Hagåtña, where they lived in dormitories and were drilled in elementary Japanese so they could teach it to the children.  In Barrigada they were Juan Sanchez and Lucille Rosario (familian Chambambi').  They taught the kids in basic Japanese and in Chamorro.  English was forbidden.

Every morning the students would gather outside and sing the Japanese anthem, Kimigayo, facing north towards the Emperor in Japan.  They would also do calisthenics before heading into the school house.

There was no resident priest in Barrigada.  Påle' Oscar Calvo would periodically come say Mass, baptize, hear confessions, anoint the dying and so on.  People said their rosaries and prayers faithfully.

The woman remembered that my uncle Ben Reyes, married to my grandmother's sister, was soncho, or municipal leader in Barrigada.  The farmers there had to provide the Japanese with the food they harvested, and the soncho coordinated this.

The man said, "Ti man ñålang ham guihe na tiempo, sa' man bunmuchåcho i Chamorro siha gi tiempon gera."  "We were not hungry at that time, because the Chamorros were hard working during the war years."  Those in Barrigada were blessed with some of the best agricultural land on Guam and farmed everything they could and raised all the animals they could.

She also remembered that my mother was one of the quicker learners of Japanese.  Later in life, my mother hated to hear Japanese or see Japanese, but I would tease her and speak Japanese to her or turn the TV to the Japanese station.  She would scold me, but, once in a while, I would catch her in a willing mood to speak Japanese or listen to the Japanese station.  She even taught me a Japanese song she learned during the war.

This elderly couple and I also spoke of more sensitive material about those war years which I cannot share for many years to come!

THE USS GOLDSTAR

USS Goldstar

Guam was not so isolated as one might think before World War II and even further back in time.  Under the American Navy administration, Guam had frequent ocean transportation to almost all points.

Guam had American destinations on either side of the waters.  Go east and one lands in Honolulu.  Go west and one arrives in Manila, then under American jurisdiction.  There was also travel north to Saipan and Japan, and even a few ships headed for Hong Kong and China.

The USS Goldstar was an American naval ship sent to Guam in 1924.  She was used mainly to transport cargo but also passengers.  For the rest of the 20s and all of the 30s, the name Goldstar was on the lips of many Chamorros.

One needed the permission of the Governor to leave Guam, and, of course, the money to buy a ticket, but many Chamorros did succeed in obtaining both permission and funds.

Some went for business; others for pleasure.  A few even went for medical reasons.  Some also went to Manila for an education.  Except for this last one, pretty much the same reasons why Chamorro travel to Manila to this day!

In July of 1934, for example, the following Chamorros boarded the Goldstar for Manila :

Vicente B. Martinez and his daughter

Jose de la Cruz

Ricardo E. Salas

Francisco Leon Guerrero

and 55 members of the Guam Militia.  That's a lot of Chamorros.  On holiday, perhaps?  Or to participate in some ceremonial function in Manila?

Also on board were two Spanish Capuchin missionaries, Father Gil de Legaria and Brother José de Goñi.  The Capuchins at the time had a big friary in Intramuros, Manila.

One never hears of the Goldstar being attacked or sunk by the Japanese in Apra Harbor on December 8, 1941 because she happened to be in the Philippines at the time.  When war broke out, she left for Australia and was safe and sound for the rest of the war.  She never returned to Guam after that.

But anyone old enough to remember the 1930s on Guam instantly remembers the USS Goldstar when it is mentioned.

GUSE'-ÑA MA ÅGANG SI PÅLE'

Påle' Bernabé

One of the pre-war Spanish Capuchin priests

Nowadays, we call the cops if there is a family dispute bordering on violence.

In the past, as one lady said, "Guse'-ña ma ågang si Påle' ke ni polisia!"  "They would call the priest quicker than calling the police."

From all my conversations with the elders about this topic, I would summarize the reasons for this as follows, in no particular order of importance :

1. A priest would keep the family trouble quiet; the police may arrest someone, file a report that makes the squabble public.

"Yanggen si Påle' ma ågang, u såga' ha' gi halom guma' i plaito."  "If Father is called, the fight will stay inside the home."

2. A priest was looked on as a person of wisdom - a spokesman for God - who could persuade and change hearts or minds; the policeman was seen as someone to be feared.

"Siempre ma respeta mås si Påle'.  Achok ha' taimano binibu-ña i palao'an pat i lahe pat todo i dos, an kumuentos si Påle', ma ekkungok." "They will surely respect Father more.  No matter how angry the woman or the man or both are, when Father speaks, they listen."

Some examples of priestly intervention were :

1. "Annai i dos saina på'go ma tungo' na mapotge' i hobensita åntes de umassagua.  Ai!  Sumen lalalo' i tata ya siña ta ålok na ha ke' puno' i hagå-ña.  Umentalo' i nana para u prinetehe i hagå-ña, pues i tata ha ke' dommo' lokkue' i asaguå-ña!  Pues ayo nai na ma ågang si Påle'!"

"When the two parents just found out that the teenage daughter was pregnant before marriage.  Oh my!  The father got so mad we could say he almost tried to kill his daughter.  So the mother intervened to protect her daughter, so the dad tried to punch his wife!  That's when they called Father!"

2. "Ai, Påle', sa' hu hasso annai måtto un puenge sen atrasao si tatå-ho.  Sen bulacho asta ke kumåkånta a'gagang gi chalan ya esta tatalo' puenge.  Ha na' sen mamåhlao si nanan-måme.  Gigon humålom si tatå-ho gi gima', inanña' si tatå-ho gi as nanå-ho.  Todo i siña ha go'te ha usa para u kastiga si tatå-ho.  I sapatos-ña, i siya, i sinturon....masea håfa siña ha gu'ot!  Ha tågo yo' si bihå-ho para u ågang guihe guato gi gima'-måme si Påle', achok ha' esta ges painge.  Magåhet na måtto si Påle'.  Ha kuentuse si nanå-ho ya magåhet na ha na' måpao.  Ha konne' si tatå-ho para u maigo' gi otro na guma'.  Sigiente dia, ha bira gue' si tatå-ho guato gi gima'-måme ya, asta ke måtai i dos, tåya' na kumuentos i dos saina-ho pot ayo na pupuenge."

"Oh, Father, I remember when my father came one night very late.  He was so drunk that he was even singing loudly in the streets and it was already midnight.  He made our mother so embarrassed.  The moment my father entered the home, he was beaten by my mother.  Everything she could hold she used to punish him.  Her shoes, the chair, the belt...whatever she could grab.  My grandmother told me to go call the priest over to our house even though it was very late.  Indeed, Father came.  He talked to my mother and really calmed her down.  He took my dad to sleep at another house.  The next day, my dad came back to our house and, till the day they both died, my two parents never talked about that night."

To be sure, not everyone called the priest, and there were times that one in the family, more so the father or a son, would turn against the priest rather than listen to him.

But, many priests were called in to intervene in a family fight, and at all hours of the day or night.

FANHA'ANIYAN

Today, if you happen to be on Guam, you can head down to the Guam Fishermen's Coop next to Chamorro Village in Hagåtña to celebrate the 6th Annual Chamorro Lunar Calendar Festival.

In Chamorro, it is being billed as the : GUPOT FANHA'ANIYAN PULAN CHAMORU

When an elderly Chamorro man who speaks fluent Chamorro came up to me with the flyer for this event and asked me what fanha'aniyan meant, I knew I had better blog about it.

In Chamorro, we have a wonderful device called the FAN+WORD+AN construction.

Put any word, noun or verb, in the middle and out comes : PLACE OF or TIME OF.

Remember that the suffix -AN usually means, in Chamorro, PLACE or TIME of.

So, if we look at the middle term in fanha'aniyan, we find ha'åni, sometimes spelled ha'åne.

Ha'åni means "day" or "life."

So, fanha'aniyan means "place of days."  In other words, calendar!

If you notice, a Y has been added to -AN because it just sounds nicer to Chamorro ears to say fanha'aniyan rather than fanha'anian.

PULAN

Just as an aside, pulan itself has multiple meanings.

It means the "moon."

Since the moon watches over us at night, it can also mean "to watch over."

Since each new moon begins a new lunar cycle, pulan has a third meaning : month.

Påle' Román, a Basque Spaniard and Capuchin missionary, can be credited for promoting the use of the indigenous word pulan for "month" and fanha'aniyan for "calendar" (instead of the Spanish-based words mes and kalendårio) because he used these indigenous terms in his many Chamorro books and pamphlets.

Personally, I like using all these terms.  Know the indigenous, but also know what generations of our mañaina have been using for three hundreds years, as well.  Otherwise, we miss out of three centuries of custom.

By the way, the indigenous word for "year" is såkkan, which also means "harvest.  But three centuries of Chamorros also used the Spanish word año.  Thousands of Chamorros for many years were equally adept at using either or both words for the same thing.

WHAT IS THE CHAMORRO CALENDAR?

Before the Spaniards came and gave us the Western calendar, our ancestors went by the moon.  They had a lunar calendar, since it is easy to mark the different phases of the moon.  The Chamorro lunar calendar was made up of thirteen moons, or months.

It's no wonder that this event is being held at the Fisherman's Coop, because traditional fishermen also use the phases of the moon to guide their fishing activities.

To learn more about this, go to :

http://guampedia.com/ancient-chamorro-cultural-aspects-of-fishing/

FAMILIA : RIOS

  

The RIOS families of the Marianas have a Spanish surname that means RIVERS.

In fact, the family crest in Spain looks like this. You can see the watery image of rivers is included in the design.

Just as many English family names come from places (Mr. Hill, Mr. Church, Mr. Woods), some Spanish names also come from places : Señor Palacios (palaces), Señor Torres (towers) and Señor Iglesias (churches). In English, there even are families called Rivers, which is Rios in Spanish.

GUAM ORIGINS

There were Rioses on Guam from very early on, as early as 1727.

In the 1727 Census, there are Rioses listed as soldiers in the Spanish regiment. This does not automatically mean they were born in Spain. They could have been from Mexico, South America or the Philippines but of Spanish, or part Spanish, blood. 

There was Francisco de los Rios, who married a Chamorro woman named Rosa Taihimas.  Their children at the time of the census were Basilio, Manuela, Lorenza and Manuela Josefa.

There was also Juan Antonio de los Rios, who married Josefa de la Cruz.  Their children were Francisco, Pablo, Antonio, Jose and Pascuala.

Lastly there was Miguel de los Rios, who married Marcela de la Cruz.  They had three children by 1727 : Ignacio, Maria and Teodora.

We do not know if these three men named Rios were related.

 

THE 1758 CENSUS

By the next census we have, 1758, we see how these three Rios families developed :

Antonio Cruz de los Rios, who is seen above in the 1727 census as the son of Juan Antonio and Josefa, married Maria Francisca Montufar.  They had a daughter Antonia.  They could have had more children after the census was taken.

Miguel de los Rios, shown in the earlier census, is still alive in 1758, and still married to Marcela.

Pablo Cruz de los Rios, also in the earlier census and son of Juan Antonio and Josefa, married Rosa de Leon Guerrero.  Their children were Esteban Ambrosio, Maria and Josefa Anastasia.

Besides these men, there were two women named Rios who were married.

MODERN TIMES

By the time we jump all the way to the 1897 census, we don't have large numbers of people named Rios.  One would think that, with three fathers named Rios in 1727, the name would have gotten much bigger, but it didn't. We don't know why. It could have been that people in the family died prematurely from various epidemics. It could have been that more girls were born than boys, and when the girls became women and married, the Rios surname was lost to the father's surname.

What we can say is that there seems to be only two lines of Rioses in Guam in the mid 1800s.

BENIGNO

One of the Rios clans was founded by Benigno Rios, who is sometimes named Benigno Castro Rios.

Benigno married twice. The first wife was a Filipina named Asunción (sometimes called Ascensión) Ayuban. This begs the question; how did Benigno, a man from Guam, at a time when travel between Guam and anywhere else was not so frequent, with most islanders not having the means to pay for travel, get to meet a Filipina woman? It's easier for a man to get up and go across the ocean; much harder for a woman, especially an unaccompanied woman, in those olden days.

I'm sure it will be very hard, if not impossible, to find out how they met, since documents are so unavailable. Perhaps Benigno went to Manila. That seems the more possible option. Many Chamorro youth joined the whaling ships and went all over the Pacific and beyond.

A smaller chance is that Asunción came to Guam. Perhaps she came with a family member, or working as a domestic servant to someone who came to Guam, such as a Spanish official. Again, these are all just possible reasons, but not definitive answers.

Benigno and Asunción had a handful of children.

One son was BRIGIDO AYUBAN RIOS. He married Josefa Garrido de León Guerrero, of the Sombrero clan. Josefa's parents were José and Mariana.

Their sons were José, Vicente and Enrique. Their daughters were Asunción and María.

One grandson of Brigido's, José León Guerrero Rios, the son of the older José, was one of Guam's leading educators. He was not just a teacher but administrator and vice principal in many schools both before and after the war, earning him the title of "Mr. Education." He served in these capacities for 51 years. No wonder the present José LG Rios Middle School in Piti is named after him. José was one of several promising young men sent to Stillwater, Oklahoma in 1919 for further education at the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College.

JOSÉ LG RIOS AND WIFE ANTONIA

Brigido's three sons had many children spreading the Rios last name. His two daughters also married.

One of Brigido's sisters, Dolores, married Don Vicente de la Rosa Mesa, one of the Cabeza de Barangay (neighborhood leader) in Hagåtña.  Their son Tomás Rios Mesa was sent to Manila for schooling and there he fell in love with María Lukban and they married, returning to Guam. Sometime before the war, Tomás went back to Manila to study dentistry and was away when the Japanese invaded Guam. María was abused by the Japanese and died in the Tinta Cave massacre. Tomás returned after the war and practiced dentistry.

TOMÁS RIOS MESA, WIFE MARÍA AND CHILDREN

Two siblings of Brigido, Concepción and Fulgencio, never married nor had children, but two other siblings, Rosa and Antonia did have children outside of marriage. Rosa gave up her children to adoption. Antonia moved to Saipan for a while during German times and had some children there but they seem to have moved back to Guam or died in youth.

Benigno married a second wife, Gregoria Campos de León Guerrero. They only had daughters.

Another Rios, Benigno Castro Rios, was the husband of Gregoria Campos de Leon Guerrero.  Their children were Fulgencio, Casiano, Antonia and Rosa.  But in another document, Casiano is identified as Casiano Ayuban Rios.  This leads me to suspect that Benigno had two wives.  The first was a Filipina by the last name of Ayuban, who was the mother of Brigido and Casiano, and thus also of Fulgencio, who is older than Casiano, and possibly of Antonia and Rosa.  Gregoria could have been the second wife, after the Ayuban wife died.

Then there's a Vicente Rios, married to Josefa Cepeda and their children Mariano and Maria.

So it seems that, with the exception of Vicente and his children, the other Rioses are of the Ayuban-Rios clan.

JOSE LEON GUERRERO RIOS

One descendant of the Ayuban-Rios clan was Jose Leon Guerrero Rios, son of Brigido and Josefa.  He was born in 1898 so he does not appear in the 1897 Census and probably, then, was the first child of the recently-married parents.

He got an early start in life as an educator and was sent by the pre-war Naval Government to study at Oklahoma A&M College.  He wrote articles for local publications and had a brief stint as a judge in the local courts.  He was a teacher and principal before and after the war, passing away in 1983.

For his life-long dedication to the island's schools, a Middle School was named after him in Piti.

One of his students, Judge Vicente Camacho Reyes, was my confirmation godfather and grand uncle through his marriage to my grandmother's sister Ana Perez Torres.

CHAMORRO TABOOS : KISSIN' COUSINS

Being mostly Catholic, one would expect Chamorros would be OK with second cousins marrying, because the Church allows second cousins to marry, without any need to get special permission to do so.  The Church, however, will not allow first cousins to marry - unless they get permission from the local bishop.

But for many of our mañaina, not even third or fourth cousins should marry.

I asked one elderly Chamorro why our culture frowns upon even third or fourth cousins marrying.

"Mampos hihot i haga'!" the woman exclaimed immediately and vehemently.

"The blood is too close!"

"Siempre gai defekto i patgon-ñiha!"  "Their child will have some defect."

Then she started to tell me about her own relatives who were first cousins and got married.  Their children were fine, but, she said, the two spouses were always fighting.

"Demasiao hihot!"  "Too close," she said.

I told her then it must be hard in some places to find a future husband or wife. 

"Espia nai gi san lago pat gi Filipinas!"  "Look," she said, "in the States or the Philippines!"

Whenever first cousins married on Guam, it was duly noted and spoken about (quietly) by other people.  It was as if people were just waiting to see some mishap or misfortune befall the couple or their children, and credit it all on the fact that they were first cousins.

My brother, too, had married a distant relative.  Since we're not too clear about the family tree once we get back to the 1870s, we think he and his wife are 5th cousins or even further back.  Despite this distance, our two clans consider each other "close."  I was told as a child to fan nginge' (reverence the hand) of any elders in this clan whenever I met them.

Sometime after they were married, my sister-in-law introduced my brother to her grandmother.  When she asked, "Håye familia-mo?"  "Who is your family?" and found out, she had a look of concern on her face!  And these two were 5th cousins or even further back!

For more, check http://paleric.blogspot.com/2011/08/fino-i-man-amko-mas-prima-mas-arima.html

GUAM-SAIPAN TRAVEL BEFORE WW2

SAIPAN POST OFFICE IN GARAPAN
1930s

People often don't realize what a "happening place" Saipan was before World War II.  Thanks to the Japanese, business was in full swing in that island, dominated by the sugar industry.  The island population swelled in the 1930s as Japanese, Okinawan and Korean laborers and civil workers came to farm sugar, open stores and man the government offices.  The pre-war population of Saipan exceeded that of Guam, thanks to the huge numbers of transplants from Japan.

Japanese merchant ships traveled from Japan to Saipan, often making stops on Guam until the political climate chilled as war drew near.  Not only was trade necessary, people also traveled by ship between Guam and Saipan.

From a passenger list on the Japanese schooner, the Chomei Maru, in 1936 we get an idea.  It carried 140 tons of freight and 9 bags of mail.  On board traveling to Guam from Saipan were :

CHAMORROS, some of whom had relatives in Saipan, probably returning from a family visit and some who went on holiday; as well as Saipan Chamorros doing the same on Guam :

Adas.  Jose T and Maria T Ada, as well as Lydia, Delia, Elvira, Luise.

Ataos.  Natividad SN, Pedro SN, Carmen SN and Isabel SN Atao.

Ana C. Blas
Ismael T. Calvo
Concepcion M. Camacho
Pedro L. and Joaquina M. Cepeda
Jose P. and Francisca T. De Leon
Jose C., Constancia C. and Felicita C. Dungca
Alejo C., Ana C. and the future Archbishop Felixberto C. Flores
Francisco B., Lagrimas P. and Maria P. Leon Guerrero
Ignacio Q. and Isabel C. Sanchez
Ana M., Guadalupe M. and Jose M. Reyes
Maria LG and Miguel LG Salas
Ana D. San Nicolas
Joaquin and Constancia Camacho
Federico M. Lizama
Jose P., Maria SN and Luise P.Wilson
Gertrudes de la Concepcion

CHAMORRO-JAPANESE

Ambrosio T. Shimizu
Dolores SN Takano

JAPANESE

T. Shinohara, married to a Chamorro
S. Sudo, married to a Chamorro
and others with no Chamorro connections

ON THE WAY BACK TO SAIPAN we see more Chamorros living on Saipan returning there after a visit to Guam, to see relatives or perhaps to do some business or enjoy a change of scenery :

Agultos.  They were originally from Sumay and moved to Saipan.

Ylanos.  Also spelled Ilano.

Palacios, Blanco, Bermudes, Concepcion, Evangelista, Toves, Quitano, Santos and de Leon Guerrero....all of whom had relations on Guam.

And some Guam Chamorros going up to Saipan for a visit: Emiliana F. and Juan F. Perez, Tomasa A. and John A. Perez.