Where the Pangallo surname comes from
Pangallo comes from an old Greek personal name, Pángalos. It is made of pán, “all,” and kalós, “beautiful”: it means “all beautiful, most beautiful.” It was an auspicious name, given to a child to wish him beauty and good fortune. Then it passed to his descendants and became a surname.
The valleys where people spoke Greek
A Greek name in Calabria is no accident. In the Aspromonte mountains, for centuries, people spoke a Greek dialect, a legacy of the Byzantine era. The PDF tells how Greek names survived in those valleys longer than anywhere else.
Where the Pangallos live today
Pangallo is a Calabrian surname. About fifteen hundred people carry it in Italy, almost five hundred families. Its stronghold is Roccaforte del Greco, in the province of Reggio Calabria, where it is the most common surname in town. Calabria alone is home to about six in ten Pangallos. With the emigration of the 1900s the surname moved north as far as Turin and southern Lazio. The PDF has the region-by-region map and the countries around the world they reached.
Variants
The PDF records no common variants of the Pangallo surname. Abroad, though, officials may have spelled it slightly differently.
FAQ
What does the surname Pangallo mean?
It comes from the Greek name Pángalos, from pán “all” and kalós “beautiful”: “all beautiful, most beautiful.” It was an auspicious name that later became a family name.
Is Pangallo a Calabrian surname?
Yes. Its heartland is the Aspromonte, in the province of Reggio Calabria, and Calabria is home to about six in ten Pangallos. The families in Piedmont and Lazio came with the emigration of the 1900s.
Is Pangallo a Greek surname?
It has Greek roots. It comes from a Greek name that stayed alive in the valleys of the Aspromonte, where Grecanico was spoken for centuries. Today it is an Italian surname, born in Calabria.
What is Grecanico?
It is the Greek dialect spoken for centuries in the valleys of the Aspromonte, a legacy of Calabria’s long Byzantine era. In those lands the name Pángalos became a surname.
Are all Pangallos related?
The surname alone can’t tell you. It is concentrated in a few towns, but the branches may have different stories. To find out you need birth records and parish registers.
Is the Pangallo surname noble?
The surname is not a sign of nobility. It comes from an auspicious name carried by families from the towns of the Aspromonte. Heraldic collections mention individual Pangallo families with a coat of arms, but they concern only those branches.
Is there a Pangallo family coat of arms?
Some individual Pangallo families had coats of arms, each tied to a specific branch and place. No single coat of arms belongs to every Pangallo.
