TUTORIAL

Macanese Families

 Famílias Macaenses

Introduction 

The Portuguese established a base in Macau in the 16th Century for trade and for the spread of Christianity. That settlement endured for four and a half centuries until 1999 when the colony was handed back to China.  The Portuguese families there, a tight-knit community, developed their own unique culture, patuá (patois) and fusion cuisine and called themselves Macaense or in English Macanese. 

This website is dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of the genealogy, history and culture of Macau and the Macanese and contains the names of 48,000 people with origins in Macau.

Access to the website is restricted to responsible Macanese.  Thus far, 1,000 Macanese have registered for the website, and there have been over 26,000 visits ("hits"). 200 people all over the world have sent data and 1,000 photos.

This is a brief tutorial on its content.  The following image shows the Welcome page.

Searching

The website is divided into Chapters, with a button for each.  Clicking on the  shows all the surnames in alphabetical order.

 Clicking on one of the names – say, Almada e Castro – shows us, on a few pages, all the members of that family. 

If we click on José Maria, we are taken to his Personal Page (there is one for every person), showing his name, and those of his parents, spouse and children.

If he is in some photo, we click on the little camera icon to see it. In this case, it reveals an image of him with his wife Idalina Maria da Costa; if we click on her face, we jump to her Personal Page.

Nicknames 

Many Macanese are known only by nicknames that are totally unrelated to their given names.  To enable these people to be found, there is an index of nicknames as well.

So if we want to find someone like "Butter" Noronha who is known only by his nickname, we click on that nickname to be taken to his Personal Page; there we learn that his real Christian name is António Francisco.

Ancestors

Of course in a family tree we want to find ancestors.

Let us return to the Personal Page of José Maria d'Almada e Castro.  On it we see "Popup Pedigree"; if we click on it, we see his parents and grandparents. 

If we click again on one of these names – say, his grandfather's – we are taken to Leonardo d'Almada e Castro's Personal Page.  We can then repeat the process to find all of José Maria's ancestors.

Descendants

In the website are 470 "Heads of Families" (the earliest ancestors of selected families).  Clicking on the   button shows the list of these Heads of Families.

If we are interested in one of the Silva families, we click on S and then on Silva, to show all the 21 Heads of the Silva Families.

Clicking on one of them – say, Carolina Maria de Arriaga Brum da Silva – reveals a box chart of all her descendants.  That chart is too large for one screen view and continues both to the right and down;  use the left and right arrows of the keyboard to show more.

These charts get pretty crowded, so the names cannot be shown in full.  But if we hold the mouse pointer over a name without clicking (what is called "hovering") the details of that person appear. (This example shows the full name of "Maria do Carmo dos Remédios da Silva" and the dates of her birth and death.)

Photos  

The website has some 1,000 photos, many of them in colour.  They are arranged in galleries.

The next image below shows thumbnails of the Carvalho gallery which contains all the photos whose captions mention the word "Carvalho".  Clicking on any one of the photos will display it in full size.

There are many old group photos, such as this 1922 one of the Yvanovich family, and another of a tennis group. In most cases, if you click on one of the faces, you will be taken to that person's Personal page.

Other Features

This website has much more than family tree information:  the

re are collections of Old Photos and Old Paintings, links to other websites and even a little on music.

In the Cuisine Chapter are hundreds of Macanese recipes, many over 100 years old.  There you will find saransuráve, chouriço vinho d'alho, bagi, ladu, and much more.  Some of these are not for the squeamish: if you are brave enough, you can learn how to convert pig's intestines into the casing of sausages, or how to cook a sheep's head! Unfortunately, many of these old recipes only gave quaint, imprecise quantities of ingredients – for example, "ten cents of ginger" – and are still untested.  Because of their historical value, they have been included in the website anyway in the hope that, in time, people might experiment with them, specify the quantities precisely, and perhaps adapt them to modern times.  For example, many recipes use lard, which would not be recommended to people suffering from high cholesterol. And we can take advantage modern technologies such as food processors and microwave ovens. 

Here is a recipe for Amargoso Lorcha and another for Capela.

There is a Library Chapter: a collection of references to books, documents, articles, magazines, etc., for both the serious researcher and the casual browser.  Some valuable old books are reproduced in full on the website.

The historical records in Macau and Hong Kong survived World War II but almost all records of Shanghai were lost.  It is therefore fortunate that there exist a few copies of an old magazine, Pela Patria, published by the Portuguese in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation, just a couple years before the outbreak of the Pacific War, which should interest Macanese whose families lived in Shanghai.  This is included in full here.

The chapter on the patuá (the creole language of Macau) includes a lexicon with the sounds of words and phrases.

A Chapter is devoted to Articles relevant to Macau, such as this one on the Dutch Attack and Rout in 1622 and which Macanese commemorate now on Dia de S. João – the Feast of St John the Baptist.

Macanese have made numerous and varied contributions to their communities. There is a Chapter devoted to Macanese (and their spouses) who have been recognised by appointment to one of the National Orders (at the level of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) or above).  The list includes 180 people who have received honours from Portugal, Great Britain, Spain, France, Japan, Canada, Australia, Cambodia, Belgium and many other countries.  And as usual, clicking on any name will take you to that person's page.

Registration 

If you are Macanese and wish to access the website for the first time, you need to register.

Click on Create an Account and fill in the boxes, including a Username and a Password of your choice.

The system will send you an email asking for confirmation;  after checking, the Website Administrator informs you of approval.  Thereafter you simply logon using your Username and Password (but note that the system distinguhishes between upper- and lower-case letters.