Surnames of Lazio

Lazio’s surnames, people by people

Before Rome, the Latins lived on the Alban Hills and in the plain, and gave their name to the region and to the language. Around Rieti were the Sabines, to the south the Volsci. From them come Latini, Sabelli and Savina. North of the Tiber, in the Tuscia, the Etruscans already had a family name passed from father to son. The surname Tarquini recalls the last kings of Rome, who according to tradition came from there.

A Roman citizen had three names, and the last one started out as a nickname: Scipio meant “staff.” With the fall of the Empire the system was lost, but the names of the great families survived thanks to the saints. In Lazio they became surnames again: Aureli, Fabi, Flamini, Scipioni. In the 6th century the Lombards took the Sabina and the area around Rieti, and their names became Pandolfi, Arduini and Sinibaldi.

For more than a thousand years nearly all of Lazio was ruled by the Popes. From that world come the names of saints and angels, and the notaries’ Latin -is: De Angelis, De Sanctis. Babies left in the wheel of the Santo Spirito hospital, near St. Peter’s, were often given the surname Proietti, from the Latin proiectus, “exposed.” In Ciociaria, the land of the ciocie, small towns and large families produced surnames that barely exist anywhere else. And to the Pontine plain, drained in the 1930s, came thousands of families from Veneto, Friuli and Emilia.

The volume gives a chapter to each of these nine peoples and stories, including the Jews of Rome. For nearly all of them it lists the surnames in the book that carry their mark.

How to recognize a surname from Lazio

Some signs are easy to spot. The final -i is the family plural: Proietti, Mancini. The diminutive in -ucci is the signature of Central Italy: Paolucci, Santucci, Iannucci. And De with the Latin -is comes from the registers of the Papal States: De Angelis, De Santis, De Paolis.

The most common source was the father’s name, often softened: Cola for Nicola, Cecco for Francesco, Meo for Bartolomeo. From there come Colantoni, Ceccarelli and De Meo. And no other place in Italy has so many surnames recalling the great families of ancient Rome. Those names came back into fashion in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, thanks to the saints and a passion for antiquity.

Province by province

At the back of the volume an index gathers the surnames that weigh most in each province. There are 211 surnames from the book, spread across the five provinces from Frosinone to Viterbo. Then comes the list of the 76 towns in Lazio where a surname from the book is the most common. In Arnara, in Ciociaria, No. 1 is Roma.