FAMILY NICKNAMES : MÅNNOK

MÅNNOK

Santos (originally de los Santos) is one of the most widespread surnames among Chamorros on Guam. And so there are numerous Santos families with different nicknames.

One of the branches of the Santos name is the familian Månnok. Månnok means "chicken" in Chamorro.

According to more than one older members of the family, a male ancestor (great-grandfather for some of my informants) raised a lot of chickens, so many chickens that people started calling him Månnok.

Other than family oral tradition, we don't know exactly why this family is better-known-as the Månnok family. It goes back to Spanish times when most cultural things weren't documented.

Two brothers are documented as being members of the Månnok family.

Félix

Félix Camacho de los Santos was officially named "better-known-as" Månnok in a court document in 1901.

In the document above, Félix de los Santos is alias (@ ) Manoc, or Månnok.

Romualdo

Another Camacho Santos of the same period is Romualdo Camacho de los Santos. He seems to be Félix's brother. Romualdo's mother's name was Micaela Camacho, but I haven't come across his father's name.

Romualdo married Ana Guzmán Untalán, the daughter of Marcos Untalán, a Filipino settler on Guam, and his Chamorro wife Joaquina Guzmán.

Romualdo and Ana's sons were Manuel, Vicente, Antonio and Marcos. Their daughters were Nicolasa, Trinidad, Maria and Ana.

Many of Romualdo's descendants lived in Talofofo since the early 1900s and many of the Månnok family are still in Talofofo to this day.

José

There was also a José Camacho Santos, probably brother to Félix and Romualdo. He was married and lived in Sumay. He also went by the nickname Månnok.

a 1905 court case involved José Camacho Santos, better known as Månnok

THE WORD "MÅNNOK"

According to the early Europeans who wrote descriptions of the Marianas, there were no chickens here until the Europeans colonized the islands. Usually, then, we should have a Spanish word for "chicken." If the animal, or flower or what-have-you, is imported, then there ought not to be an indigenous or native word for it. The Marianas didn't have deer, so our word for deer is borrowed from Spanish, "benådo." Kabåyo (horse), chiba (goat) and karabao (carabao) were all imported and are thus called in Chamorro by words with foreign origins.

But månnok is not the Spanish word for "chicken." It's not a Spanish word for anything at all. But månnok is related to similar words in other Austronesian languages, similar in sound and meaning. Manok is Tagalog for "chicken," as it is in Visayan and some other Filipino languages. In Indonesia, the Karo Batak people say manok for "chicken," and in a few other Austronesian languages it is the same.

I have a theory about månnok but I will save it for another post in the future!