Most everyone who knows me, knows that my daughter is named Sumåhi. Most don’t know when first hearing the word, exactly what it means. It’s a Chamorro word, which means “the waxing of the moon.” The root word is såhi, which is most commonly known in the form sinahi, which means “new moon” and is also the name for a necklace that many Chamorro men (kontodu Guahu) wear today.

Most don’t know, but a handful do, where I got the name from, or from where I heard it first, that made me think of it as a beautiful name. It’s not a very common word in Chamorro today, and most Chamorros upon first hearing it, assumed that it was a Chinese or Japanese word. I first came across the word in 2000, when I was first learning to speak Chamorro. At that point, I had taken two elementary Chamorro classes from Peter Onedera at the University of Guam, and wanted to continue learning until I was fluent.

It was something that for most of my life I had never even considered or thought was possible. I, after all, like many my age, had grown up with the Chamorro language as something which had been kept from us, walled away back in time, something old people greeted each other with or yelled at children in. Because of this, it was never something, for the first 19 years of my life, which I thought would ever have any real meaning for me.

I worked with my grandparents and those around me who spoke and slowly became fluent. One of the activities that I would engage in, with the help of my grandmother, in order to increase my vocabulary and also my knowledge of Chamorro grammar, was to have her help me translate Chamorro songs into English.

We would sit very closely next to a stereo (which was covered in paint because I often used it when painting), and my grandmother, whose hearing was already poor, would strain to help me with the lyrics. More contemporary artists weren’t something grandma enjoyed, so singers such as J.D. Crutch, she did not like being forced to listen to. Stuff from Johnny Sablan or Jimmy Dee was a different story. The older, early songs of Johnny Sablan were tunes that she loved to listen to.They had the power even just for a few minutes or moments, to transport her back to another time, a different era of Guam life, and even her helped her envision the faces of people who were long gone.

The albums Dalai Nene and Chamorro Yu’ were by far her favorites, since both were a blending of older tunes and lyrics, with contemporary lyrics and sounds. Many were Chamorrita tunes, which everyone on Guam supposedly knew, that people simply added their own lyrics to. When grandma would hear Johnny Sablan’s version of An Gumupu Si Paluma, she would both smile and chuckle. In the course of the song, a bird, which as a metaphor represents anything from a literal bird, a woman, a sexual organ, or Chamorros in general, lands on the branches of different Guam trees. When in the song, the bird would land on a tangantangan branch, grandma would chuckle, since that wasn’t, in all the variations of the song she’d heard, a branch that the infamous bird ever landed on.

In the translating of one song however, called “Dalai Nene” I saw, or rather felt a completely different side of grandma. I have never really seen my grandmother give off a romantic aura. I’ve only known her in the twilight of her life, and have only heard stories of her when she was younger, and so I know that she had it in her, but that the years that have passed and her SDA religious beliefs mean that much of that would be better left forgotten, or not appropriate things to talk about to anyone, much less your grandchildren.

When grandma would listen to “Dalai Nene” and sing along to it in her soft, quiet, delicate voice, I had no idea who she was thinking of. Was it a young man who had a crush on her in elementary school, perhaps an older man singing the song while walking to the farm, maybe something she heard an older sibling or cousin sing after their heart had been broken. Or maybe it was grandma’s own version that she was recalling, something she had written in her mind for someone long gone, but whose presence or absence will always remain in her heart.

I had no idea to whom or from where she was singing, but it was a side of her I had never felt before. As we translated the lyrics, which like most Chamorro songs, deals with horrible heartache and the feeling of love for one who doesn’t reciprocate, there was one word which she constantly came back to, one which seemed to fill her with a different color or energy. That word was of course ‘sumåhi.”

In the song the lines of the first version go like this I pilan yanggen sumåhi, guaha triste sumahi-ña…or in English “when the moon waxes, sometimes it is sad when it does…” I asked grandma why she liked this word so much (since at the time, I didn’t even know what it meant to say “the moon waxes”). She couldn’t really give me an answer, she just said that it was something beautiful, it just brought such beautiful images to mind.

I did not name my first daughter after my grandmother in the sense of giving her the name “Elizabeth” or “Bitbit” as she is often called. But Sumåhi became her name in order to honor my grandmother in a different way. Instead of honoring that part of her, which is out there in the world, and you can find on her driver’s license, her cedula or on her tithe envelope, I decided to try and honor that energy that I saw that day, which I knew I would only know in small bits and pieces, but which most likely represented something in grandma that she would want to be shared, that she would want to live on past her.

Like most children nowadays who are being given archaic or old Chamorro names, my daughter will most likely believe for much of her life, that she was given her name because I wanted to curse her and make her as miserable as possible. Despite this, I hope one day, in her own way, she stumbles across this blog post, or comes to find this shred of knowledge, this glint of hope that I am writing about today. I am hoping that she will understand and recognize her name as just one feeble attempt to instill in her some of the greatness and beauty that I have glimpsed in her great-grandmother.

I’m pasting the lyrics to the song “Dalai Nene” below in honor of both Sumåhi and her great-grandmother, as well as my translation of them.

I pilan yanggen sumåhi

When the moon waxes

Guaha triste sumahi-ña

Sometimes it is sad

Kuatseria un kilisyånu

Especially when there is someone

Yanggen guaha piniti-ña

Who has great pain

Likidu na finañågu

You are unique

I mina’mongmong korason-hu

The one who makes my heart race

Bai hu matai gi hilo’ tåno’

I would die from this earth

Ya ti un li’e’ ine’son-hu

And you will never see me get tired (of you)

I lassås-hu bai hu fa’kaohao

My skin I will make into a chest

I anineng-mu bai hu kaohao gui’

Your shadow I will put in it

I korason-hu para siladura

My heart will be a padlock

I te’lang-hu para yabi

My bones will be the key

Propiu minachom pulan

Just when the moon start to go down

Annai sumispiros yu’

Is when I start to sob (gasping)

Ya dalai ti un piniti

And for shame that you aren’t hurt by this

Nene kahulo’

Darling wake up