Surnames of the South and the Islands

Southern Italy’s surnames, people by people

The South spoke Greek long before it spoke Italian. For five hundred years the Byzantine Empire ruled Calabria, the Salento and, until the Arabs arrived, Sicily: when surnames were born, in many towns the everyday language was still Greek. From there come Basile, Calò, Laganà, Macrì. And from the Greek rite, with its married priests, come Privitera, the priest’s wife, and Lo Presti.

Then the others arrived. The Lombards of the Duchy of Benevento left the gastaldo, the official who gave his name to Castaldo. The Arabs, who landed at Mazara in 827, left hundreds of words in Sicily and surnames like Morabito and Musumeci. With the Normans came settlers from the North whom Sicilians called “lombardi”: from them comes Lombardo. Four centuries of Aragon and Spain added Catalano and Maiorca, and from across the Adriatic came the Albanians and the Schiavoni, the Slavs. Sardinia, with a language all its own, has surnames that look like no others: Sanna, Piras, Porcu.

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

How to recognize a Southern surname

Some signs are easy to spot. Di and De in front of the name mean “son of”: Di Stefano, De Luca. The article Lo, La, Li is typical of Sicily: Lo Presti, La Rosa. The accent at the end, as in Calò, Macrì and Laganà, is often a sign of Greek. The final -s and -u belong to Sardinia: Piras, Melis, Porcu. And a surname like Esposito recalls the foundlings, the “esposti,” abandoned children left to charity.