José Rizal was born in 1861 to Francisco Rizal Mercado y Alejandro and Teodora Alonso Realonda

y Quintos in the town of Calamba in Laguna province. He had nine sisters and one brother. His
parents were leaseholders of a hacienda and an accompanying rice farm by the Dominicans. Both
their families had adopted the additional surnames of Rizal and Realonda in 1849, after Governor
General Narciso Clavería y Zaldúa decreed the adoption of Spanish surnames among
the Filipinos for census purposes (though they already had Spanish names).
Like many families in the Philippines, the Rizals were of mixed origin. José's patrilineal lineage could
be traced back to Fujian in China through his father's ancestor Lam-Co, a Chinese merchant who
immigrated to the Philippines in the late 17th century.[11][12][note 1][13] Lam-Co traveled to Manila
from Amoy, China, possibly to avoid the famine or plague in his home district, and more probably to
escape the Manchu invasion during the Transition from Ming to Qing. He finally decided to stay in
the islands as a farmer. In 1697, to escape the bitter anti-Chinese prejudice that existed in
the Philippines, he converted to Catholicism, changed his name to Domingo Mercado and married
the daughter of Chinese friend Augustin Chin-co. On his mother's side, Rizal's ancestry included
Chinese, Japanese and Tagalog blood. His mother's lineage can be traced to the affluent Florentina
family of Chinese mestizo families originating in Baliuag, Bulacan.[14] José Rizal also had Spanish
ancestry. His grandfather was a half Spaniard engineer named Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo.[15]
From an early age, José showed a precocious intellect. He learned the alphabet from his mother at
3, and could read and write at age 5.[12] Upon enrolling at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, he
dropped the last three names that made up his full name, on the advice of his brother, Paciano and
the Mercado family, thus rendering his name as "José Protasio Rizal". Of this, he later wrote: "My
family never paid much attention [to our second surname Rizal], but now I had to use it, thus giving
me the appearance of an illegitimate child!"[16] This was to enable him to travel freely and
disassociate him from his brother, who had gained notoriety with his earlier links to Filipino
priests Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora (popularly known as Gomburza) who had
been accused and executed for treason.

Rizal's house in Calamba, Laguna.

Despite the name change, José, as "Rizal" soon distinguished himself in poetry writing contests,
impressing his professors with his facility with Castilian and other foreign languages, and later, in
writing essays that were critical of the Spanish historical accounts of the pre-colonial Philippine
societies. Indeed, by 1891, the year he finished his El Filibusterismo, this second surname had
become so well known that, as he writes to another friend, "All my family now carry the name Rizal
instead of Mercado because the name Rizal means persecution! Good! I too want to join them and
be worthy of this family name..."[16]

Education
Rizal, 11 years old, a student at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila

Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna, before he was sent
to Manila.[17] As to his father's request, he took the entrance examination in Colegio de San Juan de
Letran but he then enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila and graduated as one of the nine
students in his class declared sobresaliente or outstanding. He continued his education at
the Ateneo Municipal de Manila to obtain a land surveyor and assessor's degree, and at the same
time at the University of Santo Tomas where he did take up a preparatory course in law.[18] Upon
learning that his mother was going blind, he decided to switch to medicine at the medical school of
Santo Tomas specializing later in ophthalmology.
Rizal as a student at the University of Santo Tomas

Without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his brother Paciano, he
traveled alone to Madrid, Spain in May 1882 and studied medicine at the Universidad Central de
Madrid where he earned the degree, Licentiate in Medicine. He also attended medical lectures at
the University of Paris and the University of Heidelberg. In Berlin, he was inducted as a member of
the Berlin Ethnological Society and the Berlin Anthropological Society under the patronage of the
famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow. Following custom, he delivered an address in German in April
1887 before the Anthropological Society on the orthography and structure of the Tagalog language.
He left Heidelberg a poem, "A las flores del Heidelberg", which was both an evocation and a prayer
for the welfare of his native land and the unification of common values between East and West.