The Philippine branch

How Filipinos got Spanish surnames

On 21 November 1849, Governor-General Narciso Clavería decreed that Filipino families adopt fixed surnames. The decree came with the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos, a list of about 61,000 names. Names were assigned so that, as far as possible, each surname belonged to one family per town. Families who had used a surname for four generations could keep it.¹² FamilySearch notes that Aquino is in the Catálogo and is often devotional, honoring Saint Thomas Aquinas. Today it is most common in Manila, Pangasinan, Bulacan, Rizal and Isabela.³

Kapampangan roots

The historian Robby Tantingco traces the Tarlac Aquinos to southern Pampanga, to an ancestor from Macabebe. In the early 1800s the family moved north to San Bartolome, by the Parua River. A flood in 1861 split the family between Magalang and Concepción.⁵ Hilario Aquino, married to Isabela Lacsamana, was gobernadorcillo of Magalang in 1854. His son Braulio was gobernadorcillo of Concepción from 1885 to 1887.⁶ Braulio married Petrona Aguilar, a great-granddaughter of Ángel Pantaleón de Miranda, founder of Angeles.⁵

Because Hilario already carried the surname by 1854, only five years after the decree, the family may have used Aquino before 1849. The sources do not settle this.

Interactive family tree

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Servillano Aquino, the revolutionary

Servillano Aquino y Aguilar was born in Angeles on 20 April 1874. He joined the Katipunan in 1896, sat in the Malolos Congress, and was exiled to Hong Kong. He surrendered in 1902 and was later pardoned by President Theodore Roosevelt. He died on 3 February 1959. His three marriages, to Guadalupe Quiambao, Petronila, and Belen Sanchez, produced children born from 1893 to 1949.⁷

The ancestral house in Concepción

The Aquino ancestral house in Concepción, Tarlac, was completed in 1938 and recognized as a landmark in 1987.¹⁴ President Benigno Aquino III later unveiled a historical marker there.¹⁵

Cojuangco and the political dynasty

Ninoy Aquino's 1954 marriage to Corazon Cojuangco joined two Tarlac families. His assassination in 1983 led to the People Power Revolution and Cory's presidency, and their son Noynoy became the 15th President.⁹⁸ Noynoy died on 24 June 2021 at age 61.¹¹