How to Use Christian Name Calendars to Aid Search for Ancestors in Unindexed Philippine Genealogical Records

—  “Entierro De Un Parbulo,” Lozano, J.H. , National Library of Spain

If you have done your Filipino ancestor-hunting using the FamilySearch.org website or by calling up parishes to request for records and have come to the point in your research that the records have yet to be indexed (extracted), it could be quite challenging to look for your ancestor’s name by searching through a lot of records. But thanks to our ancestors and the customs of that time, we can find them or be led to another lead, in a faster way.

This is all thanks to Christian name calendars. During the Spanish-colonial period and early American occupation of the Philippines, Christian name calendars were consulted to determine which names to give a child for his or her christening in the Catholic Church. Mario I. Miclat wrote, “With the coming of the Spaniards, it had become the custom in the Philippines to name a baby after the saint whose feast day fell on his (or her) birthday.”1

For example, if a child was born on November 30, being Saint Andrew the apostle’s feast day, he would be christened Andrew or in Filipino/Spanish, Andres.2 As was in the case with Katipunan leader Andres Bonifacio, who was born on the 30th day of November, 1863.3

In 1897, Don Honorio Lopez, playwright, journalist, publisher, propagandist, revolutionary and astrologer published his Dimasalang Kalendariong Tagalog, an almanac that lists the Christian names from the old calendars and also the significant events in the lives of the patriots of the Philippine revolution, etc.4 There has been a continuous publication of this almanac by the descendants of Don Honorio Lopez and many copies survive to this day.

—  “Dimasalang Kalendariong Tagalog,” Don Honorio Lopez, 1970 edition, ebay.com

Project GITenberg transcribed the 1920 edition of Dimasalang Kalendariong Tagalog and is accessible through this website.

To utilize the use of Christian name calendars in Filipino family history research, consider doing the following steps:

  1. Pick a subject ancestor whose birthdate is unknown and whose estimated date of birth is 1920 or older (according to oral history). Example: Gervacio Ducay, 1894?-1897?
  2. If no estimate from oral history could be produced, subtract an estimate of 23 years from birth of eldest child if the father is the subject ancestor and 20 years, if it is the mother.
  3. Consult a Christian name calendar and look for the name. If you are using Project GITenberg’s transcription of Dimasalang Kalendariong Tagalog, simply do CTRL+F search and enter the first name of the ancestor. Be mindful of spelling name variations. Gervacio could also be spelled with the variant Gervasio. Alejandra can be spelled as Alexandra, Josefa as Josepha, Flaviano as Flabiano, etc.
  4. After the CTRL+F search, check the result for the day and month listed. In the case for the name Gervacio, the name written in the name calendar is Gervasio, Spanish variant of the Christian martyr Gervasius’ name. His feast day is celebrated on the 19th of June.
  5. Once you have the day and month retrieved from the name calendar, check the genealogical records for the ancestor’s name on the days following that date. Take note that christenings may happen a few days to a few months after birth. (Searching the records may be done offline through Parish records request or online through the Catalog Search of FamilySearch in an LDS Family History Center.)
  6. If the record is not found on an estimated year, do a +/- 5 year search. Check within 5 years prior and 5 years after your reference date.
  7. Log your research. Do not search in circles. Log your research in a notebook/excel file so that you know what you have and have not yet searched. This will save you a lot of time.
  8. If the record is still not found, this means that you have a negative result and evidence on the town that you have searched in. It is also possible that the subject ancestor was not named after a Catholic saint. In which case, you should write your findings and attach it to the profile of the subject ancestor so that others could see where you left off (if you are using an online tree like FamilySearch or Ancestry).

While it is possible that this method may yield negative results, it is also definitely possible that you might get a positive result. Because of this technique, I saved time and I was able to search the baptismal record of my ancestors like Gervasio Ducay who was born on the 19th day of June 1895, in the province of Sorsogon. I hope you find yours too! Cheers and happy searching!

-BRL

_______________________

Sources:

  1. Mario I. Miclat as quoted by Severino Samonte, “Christian calendar-based names beginning to disappear?” accessed July 26, 2022, https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1172073
  2. “Saint Andrew’s Day”, Wikipedia, accessed July 26, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Andrew’s_Day
  3. “Andres Bonifacio | Filipino political leader”, Britannica, accessed July 26, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andres-Bonifacio
  4. “Did you know: Honorio Lopez”, Inquirer News, accessed July 26, 2022, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/660565/did-you-know-honorio-lopez
  5. “Dimasalang-Kalendariong-Tagalog–1922-_16656/16656-8.txt at master · GITenberg/Dimasalang-Kalendariong-Tagalog–1922”, _16656 · GitHub, accessed July 26, 2022, https://github.com/GITenberg/Dimasalang-Kalendariong-Tagalog–1922-_16656/blob/master/16656-8.txt
  6. “Entierro De Un Parbulo,” Lozano, J.H., 1847, National Library of Spain
  7. “Dimasalang Kalendariong Tagalog,” Don Honorio Lopez, 1970 edition, ebay.com
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