Uson, A Unique and Tough Name

ASEC. Mocha Uson (Photo from Mocha's FB Page)

I have kept my silence about Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson ever since her appointment to a government post. For me, as long as she was given a task which I felt she could do, who was I to judge? Plus, I had faith in President Duterte's choices. So while I read here and there the many issues and insults thrown her way by the Liberal Party, the intelligentsia, and mainstream media, I never made a comment. Until now. I feel that people have become too focused on the shallow and the mundane and have forgotten the bigger picture. And I feel that we have become a nation very quick to judge, to impugn, and to malign, not caring if we have all the facts on hand. Thus, my genealogical two cents' worth.

My comment, still, is genealogical, because that is where I am best in doing. Ever since I started doing genealogy I always believed that we are shaped by what happened to our family's past. Naturally, it does not mean that we are stuck in whatever present situation our family has left us in, but it will always be there to influence and lead us, whether to something magnificent or evil depends on us.

Now, back to Mocha. I have been trying to find our more about her genealogy because I had this feeling, just like President Duterte, that her name would have some very interesting and profound meaning. It has taken me more than 2 months of online research and I finally struck gold.

The town of Uson in the province of Huesca (Photo from Google Maps)

According to the Instituto de Historia y Heraldica Familiar, the surname USON is a variant of the Spanish family name Usón, which is an Aragonese name that is considered rare with very few distribution in Spain and is mostly found in the province of Zaragoza. It is derived from the place-name Uson, the name of a small town of the province of Huesca, derived in turn from the Basque voice -uson, meaning "field of grass" (campo de gramas).

The Cynodon dactylon

Simple as it may sound, when researched further, the name Uson is associated with a particular grass with the scientific name, Cynodon dactylon, which is better known as Bermuda grass. What is interesting is that the Bermuda grass is really an apt representation of ASEC. Mocha.

For one, Bermuda grass, just like many other plants, can be a weed or a desirable species. It is extremely fast-growing and tough and thus making it popular and useful for sports fields because, even when damaged it will recover very quickly. 

The Bermuda grass best thrives in warm temperate climates, because it can survive in places where few other grasses can. And perhaps, because of this natural survival trait, it is also highly aggressive, crowding out most other grasses and invading other habitats, and has become a hard-to-eradicate weed in some areas.

As I have always said, surnames often mean more to the bearer than we know. ASEC. Mocha's last name clearly is an obvious and apt description of her. Just like the Bermuda grass from where her name is derived, Mocha has been really tough and very strong despite her detractors' constant attacks. And as stated - even when damaged it will recover very quickly - well, hasn't she bounced back from all the controversies and lies peddled against her?

But the best description I have found of her surname that really suits her is this: "it can survive in places where very few others can".

Auspicious Name for an Auspicious Start

In genealogy, discovering the meaning of names is one way to learn more about a person and his family. While it does not always necessarily mean an honorable name points to an honorable person, some names do tend to mean something bigger, better.

The newly sworn-in Vice Mayor of Davao City, Hon. Bernard Al-ag, is a concrete example. The Al-ag name is a uniquely indigenous Filipino name, not one adopted from the Spaniards. Interestingly, the surname 'Al-ag' comes from the Bisaya word "aláag", which refers to the waxing moon, or near full moon. In Lunar symbolism, the waxing moon is a time to attract, a time for bringing positive change, love, good luck, and growth. This is a time for new beginnings, to conceptualize ideas, to invoke all that is good. 

This positive and auspicious meaning to his name goes very well with the meaning of Mayor Sara's own name. The Duterte name, from the French du tertre, means "hillock" or a "small mound", but is also an allusion to "rising above others" or "prominence" or "elevation". With this tandem of symbolic family names, hopefully Davao's growth will continue and benefit all its people.

Good luck, VM Al-ag! 

Of Mall Fires, The Gaisano Clan, and the Third Generation Curse

When I saw on Facebook on January 5 that the Metro part of Ayala was on fire, my mind immediately brought me back to 1998 to 2001 when I was a student at the University of the Philippines Cebu. During long breaks between classes, lunch time, or after our Wednesday guidance session, my friends and I would cram ourselves into the Vitara or Civic of one of our friends and ride to Ayala. On days when our designated driver was not around, we would walk to Ayala and would always enter through the Metro. I must have gone through that part of the mall more than hundreds of times and to see it destroyed by fire was quite sad.

Metro Gaisano burning. (Photo credit to Mayor Tommy Osmeña's FB page)

One of my readers reminded me that though I have already written about the main line of the Gaisano's through an old article on Don Pedro Gotiaoco, I have not written about the Gaisano clan. I realized that as someone whose earliest memories of supermarkets were at their Gaisano South store in Leon Kilat and later in JS Gaisano in Ilustre in Davao City, it is high time that we explore the Gaisano family tree.

Other than warm memories of buying goya milk chocolate or Yan-Yan or Haw Flakes from their stores when I was young, I also remember several cases of fire destroying this and that store of the Gaisanos. 

One of my earliest memories was a fire eating up my favorite JS Gaisano in Davao in the 80s. I no longer remember when the new store was erected, but rebuild the family did.

In 1997 another fire hit the family, this time the White Gold Department store. I remember that this store was a favorite of my grandfather, and that one of my maternal aunts had her wedding reception in the White Gold House restaurant. Again, the family rebuilt and the store has now been relocated to a nearby place.

In December of 2011 the five-story Gaisano Capital South in Leon Kilat and Colon caught fire at around 12:40 a.m. Then in January of 2017 another fire hit one of their stores, this time the multi-million building Gaisano Capital  in Barangay Mintal, Tugbok District. In the same year, another fire also hit the Gaisano mall in Ormoc City, again starting before dawn.

Although there may be some who wish to find connections in these fires, my job is to discuss the genealogy of the Gaisanos, not the investigation into the fires that have devastated their stores over the years.

Family Curse?

The Gaisano dynasty started with a small, typical Filipina known as an active player in Cebu’s socio-economic activities during her time. She was a well-known philanthropist and was always supportive of the local government. As discussed in my previous article on the Go clan of Cebu, Doña Modesta Singson Gaisano was one of the children of Chinese immigrant Don Pedro Gotiaoco. 

One of the old stories about Don Pedro was that he left China because he had accidentally killed a relative. Some say that this accidental killing activated a curse that was later to haunt several lines of Don Pedro's descendants. Consider this: aside from various fires destroying various Gaisano department stores through the years, fires have also hit several Robinsons stores, prominent among these were the 2011 fire that hit Robinsons mall in midtown Cebu and in 2013 when another fire hit Robinsons Galleria located in Ortigas Center. This is an interesting connection because the founder of the Robinsons department stores, John Gokongwei, Sr., was a half-brother of Modesta S. Gaisano; both were the children of Don Pedro Gotiaoco.

The Third Generation Curse

Aside from the Gotiaoco curse, there is also another theory for all these fires. In a study conducted in Singapore, it was discovered that only 13 percent of family businesses in Singapore survive until the third generation; the same study has also been applied to Filipino family businesses which tended to have similar results as their Singaporean counterpart. These similarities in declining family businesses have led to the so-called three-generation curse, which states that the first generation creates the business, the second one maintains it, the third one fritters it away. 

Unfortunately for this so-called theory, the Gaisano fires happened before and after the third generation began to assume control of the business. For instance, the burning of White Gold and JS Gaisano in Davao happened when the sons of Modesta were still alive, thus it was still the second generation running the business. And the latest fires have happened during the watch of the third and some fourth generation members of the family. Besides, it is clear that the Third Generation curse is far from being applicable to the Gaisanos. The Gaisano family has expanded their supermarket empire into most major cities all over the Philippines. 

What started as just one supermarket has now grown into an empire. When Modesta S. Gaisano died 1985 her children took over her business and made it the empire that it is today.

The Gaisano Family

First, it is clear that the Gaisano name is a maternal name. Modesta Singson Gaisano married Jose Sy Leng Kee, Chinese from Long Hu Ya Kou, Jinjiang in Fujian. Their eleven children: five boys, David, Stephen, Henry, Victor, and John, and six girls, Pian Pian, Kam Kam, Eng Eng, Yan Yan, Ching Ching, and Teng Teng, all used Gaisano as a last name and Sy as a middle name. Although not a rule, many Chinese - Filipino families would use the existing more Filipino last name as a family name and the father's Chinese name as a middle one.

The family has maintained its Chinese identity by marrying into almost purely Chinese or Chinese-Filipino families. Even the fourth and fifth generations continue the practice of marrying within the Chinese community. However, here and there, some marry outside the community. For instance, Henry Sia Gaisano II, son of Edmund Gaisano, married Jhezarie Javier, former Bb. Pilipinas-International, while Valeri Gaisano, Henry II's sister, also married a non-Chinese, Glenn Sebastian.

Since the passing of Modesta S. Gaisano, the various chains of the Gaisano clan have evolved into the following: Gaisano Capital, owned by the Gaisano Capital Group that was started by Henry Sy Gaisano, Sr. and as of 2010 already has 15 branches all over the Visayas and Mindanao; Gaisano Country Malls, a chain of malls that was started by Stephen Gaisano, Jr., son of Stephen S. Gaisano, Sr.; Gaisano Malls that were started by David Sy Gaisano which also includes White Gold; Gaisano Grand Malls, founded by Benito S. Gaisano, son of Henry S. Gaisano, among others. Aside from malls and supermarkets, the family has also expanded into other businesses like banking.

And despite all the issues the family has had to deal with over the years, it cannot be denied that the Gaisanos have helped many throughout the years. For one, their hundreds of stores all over the country have given employment to many, and their generosity in giving scholarship funds to deserving students started 56 years ago continues to this very day. The Gaisano scholarship, which is one of the longest running scholarships in the Philippines, is a project of the Doña Modesta S. Gaisano Foundation established by the children of the Gaisano matriarch in honor of their mother. Every year, 30 outstanding graduates from the different schools and universities in Cebu are awarded P100,000 each as funding for their education.

Family curses, while not really logical, add some flavor to family histories. The Kennedys have their own family curse story which just adds more to the tragic events surrounding the deaths of its more charismatic members. Even the Gokongwei's, cousins of the Gaisanos, also have a strange family curse about a half-snake half human member of the family who lurks inside the walls of the Robinsons department stores and abducts female customers. No matter how much the family tries to dispel the rumors, these curses have a life of their own.

So, unlike the supposed victims of the Third Generation curse, it does appear that the family is going to go beyond the third generation; in fact, the fourth generation members have now started doing their fair share in running the business.

I Am Southeast Asian, North Slavic, Sardinian, Dravidian, and 10 more Ethnicities...How About You?

This is not my first article on genetic genealogy. In fact, I have already posted a rather long article on my maternal grandfather's Y-DNA story, which was mostly taken from the report I got from National Geographic's Genographic Project. Today, I will simply and briefly discuss on my latest discoveries about genetics and ethnic makeup, but I plan to write a more indepth article on genetic genealogy in general and about further discussion on my own genetic genealogy.

Having researched my family history since 1994 and after already exhausting all available written documents about my family's history, I decided to expand my quest for my ancestors by trying out genetic genealogy. While this has been in the market for some years now, it was only in the late 2010s that the tests became more readily available at a much affordable rates. And, as more and more people became interested in using DNA to trace one's family history deeper into time, more companies came up with better test results at a much faster timeline. So, I decided that the fastest way for me to get results on my family's genetics was through asking a sibling of my parents in the United States to do it since many of the genetic genealogy companies are found there. Take note, however, that these tests would only show their approximate ethnic breakdown which may be slightly or very different if I were to test my mother or father instead. However, since I am not interested for now to know MY own specific genetic breakdown and simply wanted to get an idea of where both my families are from, I was okay with that caveat.

So in 2014 I asked my mom's brother, and he graciously agreed to do so, to take the National Geographic Genographic test, the results of which I already discussed in an earlier post. When Ancestry had a sale on DNA testing late 2016, I once again requested the same uncle to take the test. An uncle is better than an aunt because, in the weird world of genetics, a man has both Y-DNA and mtDNA, meaning males inherit the Y-DNA from his father and the mtDNA from his mother, while a woman does not inherit the Y-DNA. So up until last year I already had an idea of what approximately made up half of my genes. Late in 2017, when MyHeritage had a sale on their DNA testing I requested a brother of my dad to take the test. Again, like my mom's brother, my paternal uncle also agreed to take the test immediately. The results came as the new year was starting, so what better way to start 2018 than discuss these results.

Presenting, my APPROXIMATE ethnic breakdown!

An approximation of my genetic breakdown

Take note, this is not a very scientific way of estimating genetic results. As I will discuss more later, it is a quirk in the passing down of genes that though we get genetic materials from both our mother and father, the percentage may not always be the case. So, if your mother is Filipino and your father is Indian, it does not automatically mean you are half Filipino and half Indian, per se. It is a reality that you may only get a quarter of your father's Indian genes and have more Filipino genes from your mother.  While for the sake of simple illustration you can quantify it as such, current technology has not made it possible to give us the exact breakdown of our parents' ethnicities.

But again, this post is an introductory post of sorts so I will dispense with the scientific realities and discuss my genetic results like any regular, non-scietific person.

What the image below, which is an enlarged portion of the image above, shows is that I am approximately almost exclusively Asian. 

A huge percentage of my approximate genetic breakdown is East Asian at 90%. My East Asian ethnicity is both from my maternal and paternal families, broken down into Southeast Asian, Taiwanese, and Central Chinese from both of my parents, and Cambodian/Thai, Japanese/Korean, and Siberian exclusively from my maternal family.

Around 4.35% of who I am is West Eurasian. That means partly being Central Asian (which includes Indus Valley and Mid-Turkic), North Slavic, and Sardinian. Then around 1.15% of my West Eurasian ethnicity is, according to DNALand, "ambiguous". This just means that they cannot compare this portion of my mom's genetic material to any existing gene pool in their database. As later articles on other genetic companies' results will show, this "ambiguous" percentage has disappeared.

Both sides of the family also gave me Native Oceanian genes. Then, less than 1% Dravidian and another less than 1% ambiguoss ethnicity I received from my father's genes.

Based on the percentages I have shown, I simply averaged the genetic percentages of my mother and father's sides. 

As many genetic experts will tell you, these percentages are not accurate but are simply approximation. I promise to discuss more on genetic genealogy as this has become quite a fast-growing tool for many Filipino genealogists. For now, suffice it to say that I had fun calculating my probable and approximate genetic breakdown. Discovering one's ancestry breakdown, even just an approximation, is a spiritual experience. The world becomes smaller and smaller as you delve deeper into your roots. Finding that you have genetic similarities with people from other nations makes you realize that humanity really is but one big family. Despite the vastness of our planet, I would never feel alone anymore.

Happy New Year!

Note: The presentation above is based on the results given by DNALand. As discussed, I will add more to my discussion on genetic genealogy in the next few weeks.