Monday, July 10, 2006
i often joke about my last name coz it has a funny sound to it.
mind you, i wouldnt trade it for any other surname :P
but a few years back, ive since established that Goopio is a "polish" word.
and has a terrible polish meaning so yeah, i sort of believed that i have
Polish ancestry somewhere along the way hahaha
of course that finding sort of contradict to what i was told when i was
growing up.
my mom said that my father is of spanish heritage (like everyone else in
the phils) not Polish.
when i was a kid, my mom used take me to my fathers hometown (cebu) to visit my
relatives, and i used to be amazed at how beautiful some of my aunties and cousins were. they really looked like stars from a spanish soap opera (only that they
spoke cebuano and not spanish) and i often wished id grew up as pretty as them.
but the email i received from a new found relative from cebu, sort of fixed
all my doubts with regards to my heritage.
he said:
"every year during May , the clan has a reunion. we can trace relatives thru
our family tree going back to 1820. our forfather is Don Juan Goopio,
former governador cillo of San Remigio (formerly Canhagas)."
anyways, in grade school we used to study the spanish colonisation in the
philippines and i had this impression that Gobernador Cillos were filthy and mean and
greedy spaniards who just took any land they want anytime from Filipinos before, just
because they can.
i even pictured them as having pointy mustache and having curly long hair,
and having big guts too :P
gobernador cillos were spaniards appointed by the king of spain to govern
the people living in a certain town.
he is bestowed to owing the land up to wherever his eyes can see (so if he
was much taller, he can own much further)
how cool is that?
but now that i know my great grandpa was one of them, i take my word back
againts Gobernador Cillos,
i dont think they were all so bad after all hahahahaha
bibi-geri roared at