Volume · Campania

Surnames of Campania

origin, meaning, spread and curiosities

€19.90Instant PDF · 179 pages

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In Italian and English: you get both versions
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Naples was born Greek: its name, Neapolis, means “new city.” Then came the Romans of the Campania felix, the Lombards of Benevento, the Byzantine dukes, the Normans of Aversa, the Angevins who made it a capital, two centuries of Spanish viceroys. Each of them left something in the surnames families still carry today.

In this volume you’ll find 200 of the most common surnames in Campania and 100 lesser-known surnames, some extremely rare, nearly all at home here: some of them you wrote to us under our videos, others exist almost only in a couple of towns.

Origin and meaning
Map of the regions
Variants
Fun facts
Surnames province by province
Ancestor guide

300surnames

179pages

11history chapters

PDFinstant download

The volume at a glance

Surnames: 300: 200 of the most common and 100 lesser-known
Pages: 179, in PDF
Region: Campania, with the surnames divided among the provinces of Naples, Salerno, Caserta, Avellino and Benevento
Chapters: eleven, on the peoples and stories behind Campania’s surnames: Greeks, Romans, Lombards, Byzantine Naples and Amalfi, Normans, Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese and Spaniards, Albanians and Schiavoni, Jews, the children of the Madonna

The volume

What's inside

For each surname, its origin, its meaning and the language it comes from, from Latin to Greek, from Germanic to Arabic
The map of the regions where it’s common today and an estimate of how many families carry it in Italy
The Campania record, when there is one, meaning its rank in Campania or the town in the region where it’s near the top
The variants, meaning the dialect forms, the old spellings and the diminutives
One fun fact per surname, from an old document to a historical figure
Eleven chapters on the peoples and stories that shaped Campania’s surnames, from the Greeks of Cuma to the Annunziata wheel
The province-by-province index, with the surnames that weigh most in each, and the towns in Campania where a surname from the book is No. 1
Two indexes, by origin and in alphabetical order, a guide to start searching for your ancestors, a family tree to fill in and a surname scroll

Buy the volume · €19.90

Pay by card on Payhip, secured by Stripe
Instant PDF, and the link also arrives by email
In Italian and English: you get both versions
A4 format: read it on your phone or print it

A blurred page from the volume Surnames of Campania

Blurred pages: the full text is in the PDF.

Campania’s surnames, people by people

Italy’s first Greeks landed right here, in the 8th century BC: first on Ischia, then at Cuma, and from Cuma came Neapolis. Greek returned in the Middle Ages with the Byzantine duchy of Naples, and from that world come names like Cirillo and Basile. Most of Campania’s surnames, though, come from the Latin of the Campania felix: Roman names that later became Christian, trades, nicknames.

For five hundred years the Lombards of Benevento, Salerno and Capua ruled much of the region, except Naples, Amalfi and the coast, and left the gastaldo, the official who gave his name to Castaldo. At Aversa, in 1030, the first Norman holding in Italy was born; under the Angevins Naples became a capital, under the Spanish one of the most populous cities in Europe, and many Spanish surnames became so Neapolitan they can no longer be recognized. From the other shore of the Adriatic came Albanians and Schiavoni: in Irpinia there’s still a town where old Albanian is spoken.

The volume gives a chapter to each of these eleven peoples and stories, and for many of them it lists the surnames in the book that carry their mark.

How to recognize a surname from Campania

Some signs are easy to spot. De and Di in front of the name: De Rosa, De Luca, Di Martino. The diminutives in -iello, -ella and -ino: Vitiello, Borriello, Cozzolino, Piccirillo. Surnames of devotion, like Annunziata. And the most Neapolitan surname of all, Esposito: it was given to the babies left in the wheel of the Santa Casa dell’Annunziata, the “esposti,” the exposed ones, and today it’s the most common surname in Campania.

Province by province

At the back of the volume an index gathers, province by province, the surnames that weigh most there: 186 surnames from the book, spread across the five provinces from Avellino to Salerno. Then comes the list of the 74 towns in Campania where a surname from the book is the most common: in Torre del Greco, for example, No. 1 is Sorrentino, the surname of those who came from the Sorrento peninsula.

Is your surname in the volume?

Type it below: we'll tell you right away if it's there, and in which volume.

Surnames in red also have their own booklet.

FAQ

Is my surname in the volume?

The full list of the 300 surnames is on this page. If yours isn’t there, request it through our contact page: new booklets come from the most requested surnames.

How is it different from the volume on the South and the Islands?

The South volume picks 300 surnames from eight regions. This one is devoted to Campania alone: eleven chapters on the region’s peoples and stories and, when there is one, each surname’s record in Campania. 84 surnames are in both: the other 216 you’ll find only here.

Will I find the surnames of my province?

At the back of the volume an index gathers, province by province, the surnames that weigh most there: 186 surnames from the book, spread across the five provinces from Avellino to Salerno, not just Naples. There’s also the list of the 74 towns in Campania where a surname from the book is the most common.

What’s the difference between the volume and a surname booklet?

In the volume each surname has a half-page entry: origin, map, variants and a fun fact. The booklet is devoted to a single surname and tells its story, its towns and its distribution in 12-19 pages, with a family tree and a scroll made out to that surname.

Does the volume tell me who my ancestors were?

No. A surname tells you where a word comes from, and two families with the same surname can have completely different stories. At the back of the volume there’s a guide to start searching for your ancestors in the archives, free and from home.

Does the volume include my surname’s coat of arms?

No, because a surname has no coat of arms: a coat of arms belonged to one specific branch of a family, not to everyone who carries the surname. When a fun fact mentions one, the entry says which family it belonged to.

Can I print it?

Yes, for personal and family use: you can print it for yourself and your relatives.

Buy the volume · €19.90

Campania volumeBuy · €19.90

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