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Il Mio Cognome Archive of Italian Families
Cover of the volume Surnames of Veneto

Volume · Veneto

Surnames of Veneto

origin, meaning, distribution and fun facts

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€19.90Instant PDF · 179 pages

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  • In Italian and English: you get both versions
  • A4 format: read it on your phone or print it

For more than two thousand years Veneto has carried the name of its most ancient people. Then came the Romans, the Lombards, a thousand years of the Serenissima, the Cimbrian settlers of the Asiago Plateau, and each left something in the surnames: baptismal names said the Venetian way, like Zordan for Giordano, trades in dialect, like Marangon, the carpenter, and the cities people left from: Trevisan, Padovan, Milan.

In this volume you’ll find 200 of the most common surnames in Veneto, from the Dolomites to the lagoon, from Verona and Vicenza to Padua, Treviso, Venice and Rovigo, and 100 lesser-known surnames, some extremely rare, nearly all born here.

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

300surnames

179pages

10history chapters

PDFinstant download

The volume at a glance

Surnames
300: 200 of the most common and 100 lesser-known
Pages
179, in PDF
Provinces
Belluno, Padua, Rovigo, Treviso, Venice, Verona, Vicenza
Chapters
ten, on the peoples and stories behind the surnames: the ancient Veneti, Romans, Lombards, the Serenissima, Chioggia and the lagoon, the Cimbri of the Plateau, the Dolomites, the children of the Pietà, shops and trades, “Mèrica”

The volume

What's inside

  • For each surname, its origin, its meaning and the language it comes from, from Latin to the Germanic of the Lombards
  • The map of the Italian regions where it’s common today and an estimate of how many families carry it
  • The Venetian record, when there is one, meaning its rank in Veneto or in the province, or the town where it’s No. 1 or near the top
  • The variants, meaning the other forms and spellings of the same surname
  • One fun fact per surname, from a town to a dialect word
  • Ten chapters on the peoples and stories that shaped Venetian surnames, from the ancient Veneti to the emigrants in Brazil
  • The province-by-province index, with the surnames that weigh most in each, the towns where they’re No. 1, and two indexes, by origin and alphabetical
  • 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 VenetoA blurred page from the volume Surnames of VenetoA blurred page from the volume Surnames of Veneto

Blurred pages: the full text is in the PDF.

Veneto’s surnames, people by people

Long before the Romans, the plain between the Adige and the Piave was the land of the Veneti, a people with a language and a script of their own, famous for their horses: the region still bears their name. Under the Romans, Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso and Oderzo grew, and from Latin come many trade surnames: Sartor is the tailor, Callegaro the shoemaker, Carrer the cartwright, Muraro the mason.

Then the others arrived. In 568 Alboin’s Lombards entered Italy right through the Northeast, and their braida, the grassy field near the village, became Breda. For more than a thousand years Venice was a republic, and in its notaries’ registers G turned into Z: Giorgio was Zorzi, Gilio was Zilio. In Chioggia a handful of surnames, like Boscolo, Tiozzo, Penzo and Bullo, are carried by thousands of families, and to tell them apart people still use the “detto,” the family nickname. On the Asiago Plateau German-speaking settlers, the Cimbri, put down roots, and Frigo is the No. 1 surname in Roana; among the Dolomites, in small and isolated towns, many surnames are tied to a single valley. And then there are the foundlings of the Pietà, the workshops of the Arsenal, where the marangoni, the carpenters, worked, and the Venetians who left at the end of the 1800s for “Mèrica,” mostly for Brazil.

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

How to recognize a Venetian surname

Some signs are easy to spot. The final vowel that drops: Sartor, Carrer, Milan. G turning into Z: Zordan from Giordano, Zorzetto from Giorgio. The diminutive in -in, as in Bertin, Tonin, Bianchin, and the augmentative in -on, as in Rigon, Lorenzon, Berton. And above all the ending -ato, which means “the ones of”: the Bortolato are the children of Bortolo, the Simionato those of Simeone, the Ceccato those of Cecco.

Province by province

At the back of the volume an index gathers, province by province, the surnames that weigh most there: 282 surnames from the book, spread across the seven provinces from Belluno to Vicenza. Then comes the list of the 106 towns in Veneto where a surname from the book is the most common: in Venice, for example, No. 1 is Vianello, in Padua Schiavon, in Chioggia Boscolo.

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 Northern Italy?

The Northern Italy volume picks 300 surnames from eight regions. This one is devoted to Veneto alone: ten chapters on the region’s peoples and stories and, when there is one, each surname’s Venetian record. 63 surnames are in both: the other 237 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: 282 surnames from the book, spread across the seven provinces from Belluno to Vicenza. There’s also the list of the 106 towns in Veneto 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, with tips for Veneto, where civil registration arrived with Napoleon and became permanent from 1871.

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.

What if scholars disagree about the origin?

We tell you. When an origin is certain, it’s written as certain; when it isn’t, the entry carries the gray “disputed origin” badge and gives you the theories.

Can I print it?

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

Buy the volume · €19.90

Veneto volumeBuy · €19.90

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