Where the Santamaria surname comes from
Santamaria is a surname that comes from a place. In Italy no saint has given a name to as many places as the Madonna: towns, hamlets, rural districts, country chapels. Anyone born in one of those places, or living nearby, became “the one from Santa Maria.”
That’s why the surname has no single hometown. It was born dozens of times, in different regions, each time near a church or a village of the Madonna.
Two brothers and a championship
Around Genoa there’s a branch of Santamarias all its own. Two soccer-playing brothers came from there, and on the match sheets they were Santamaria I and Santamaria II. Together they won a national championship with the team of a small town in Piedmont. A few years earlier, one of them had been banned because of a check. The story is in the PDF.
Where the Santamarias live today
Santamaria is above all a surname of the South. There are about 2,600 families in Italy, with their heart in Sicily and then in Apulia. It’s also strong in Lazio, Campania and Lombardy. In the North there’s a separate line, between Genoa and the hills of Tortona. That’s where you’ll find the village where it’s the third most common surname, Casasco. Around the world there are a great many Santamarias, but nearly all of them speak Spanish. The region-by-region map and the countries the Italian Santamarias reached are in the PDF.
Variants
The surname has only one form, written as one word or as two. Then there are similar surnames not to be confused with it, and the PDF explains which ones.
| Surname | Where it is concentrated |
|---|---|
| Santamaria | Sicily, Apulia, Lazio |
| Santa Maria | Lombardy, Lazio, Tuscany |
FAQ
What does the surname Santamaria mean?
“Of Santa Maria.” It pointed to someone who came from a place dedicated to the Madonna, or lived nearby: a town, a hamlet, a rural district, a church.
Is Santamaria a Sicilian surname?
Its heart is in Sicily, followed by Apulia, but the surname was born in many different regions. In the North there’s also a line around Genoa and in the hills of Tortona, which is not related to the Santamarias of the South.
Are Santamaria and Santa Maria the same surname?
Yes, it’s the same surname written two ways. Santamaria, as one word, is by far the most common. In old documents the same family may also appear as Santa Maria or Di Santa Maria.
Is Santamaria a Spanish surname?
The Spanish Santamaría is a different surname, born in Spain the same way, from places dedicated to the Madonna. The two families of surnames met only in the Americas.
Are all Santamarias related?
No. Every region has a place called Santa Maria, and two Santamaria families almost never have any link between them. To trace your own story you need birth records and parish registers.
Is the Santamaria surname noble?
The surname itself is not a sign of nobility. It comes from the name of the place a family came from, not from a title.
Is there a Santamaria family coat of arms?
There is no coat of arms that belongs to all Santamarias. If a Santamaria family from Naples or Genoa had a coat of arms, it belonged to that particular branch. Almost no Santamaria family ever had one.
