The Hidden Meaning of Your Last Name

Whenever he sees an Italian last name for the first time, my husband asks me what it means. Nine times out of ten I tell him, "It isn't a word. It's just a name." That changes now. It turns out there is a meaning to the names, but it isn't always obvious.

You see, I've just finished a book by Joseph G. Fucilla titled "Our Italian Surnames". The book covers more than last names, although they are the main focus. I learned so much that I'm a little ticked off that there are so many naming nuances I'd never learned before.

What books are available for names in your ancestors' countries? After reading a couple of novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky this year, I found Russian patronymic names overwhelming. There's a lot to learn about the names in your family tree.

I'm not talking about baby-naming conventions that vary by nationality. The first son is named after the paternal grandfather. The second son is named after the maternal grandfather. No. I'm talking about the origin of Italy's overabundance of last names.

The meaning of the last names in your family tree may be hidden. Discover their origin with the right resource books.

The author breaks Italian name sources into more than 10 categories. He gives tons of examples, so you can expect to find some names from your Italian family tree. He also distinguishes the meanings of the names by the part of the country.

What a surprise to learn that some last names originated by:

• cutting the end off an ancestor's name (Nicola becomes Cola), or
• dropping the middle out of a name (Bernardo becomes Bardo).

There's a whole section in the book showing how descendants of men named Francesco (and several other names) can have surnames you might not expect:

• Scotto, coming from the variant Francescotto
• Chini, coming from the variant Franceschino
• Cicciarelli, coming from the variant Francisco

The author shows a long list of progressions leading from Francesco to something like Chiccione.

Here are a few of the types of names with examples. See any you recognize?

• Human qualities: Forte = strong
• Plants: Garofalo = cornflower
• Geography: LaMotta = landslide
• Animals: Stallone = stallion
• Insects: Vespucci = wasp
• Jobs: Podesta = mayor
• Objects: Botticelli = barrel
• Anatomy: Capone = head

"Our Italian Surnames" covers thousands and thousands of last names. It's available on Genealogical.com.

I have another book, "Le Famiglie Campane" (The Families of Campania) by Fabio Paolucci. It details the more illustrious surnames from the Campania region of Italy. For example, the book includes the name Iadanza. That's the ancestral last name of American actor Tony Danza. It says the name is common in the town of Pietrelcina (that's where Tony's family came from). The author says the name comes from a female ancestor named Abbondanza.

This book is available on Amazon in Kindle format. You can read it on your computer with the Kindle app if you don't have a Kindle device.

Then there's the 3,379-page PDF I downloaded in 2014 by Ettore Rossoni. The title is "L'Origine dei Cognomi Italiani, Storia ed Etimologia" (The Origin of Italian Surnames, History and Etymology). This is a treasure for me because it offers the best explanation of my maiden name, Iamarino. It's a shortened version of an ancestor's name: Giovanni Marino. Giovanni can have a shorter version: Ianni. Shorten Ianni again and you get Ia. So Pietro, the son of Giovanni Marino, is Pietro Ia Marino, then Pietro Iamarino.

This PDF book is available on the Internet Archive. Don't be put off by the archive.org website not using https security protocol. I assure you, it's fine.

One thing I can't understand is why people kept derogatory last names generation after generation. "Our Italian Surnames" mentions tons of insulting last names:

• Barbaro = barbarous
• Vendetta = spiteful person
• Falso = deceitful person
• Mattina = insane person
• Cafone = uncouth
• Caiazzo = simpleton
• Zingaro = vagabond

In Joseph G. Fucilla's book, my grandmother's maiden name of Saracino is a cruel, wicked, or irreligious man. In Ettore Rossoni's book, Saracino is tied to the Arab Saracens, but the word Saracen seems to derive from the Semitic "thief" or "marauder". Yikes!

It's common for Italian emigrants to alter their names to blend in with their adopted country's culture. So why didn't more people shed their belittling names? Did the bad connotation become meaningless over time?

Whatever country holds your roots, there are unique, fascinating gems of culture for you to discover.

And speaking of names:

• When Did Your Ancestors First Use a Last Name?
• Where Did Your Last Name Come From?
• A Deep Dive into Your Family's Last Names

4 Steps to Make Your Digital Photos More Valuable

In January I wrote about "12 Genealogy Projects to Put on the Calendar". I'm tackling each job in turn, and I'm so glad to get them done. I rearranged a few of the months, and I had to change one project.

That project was to "Digitize more pages" using HandwritingOCR. It turns your document images into text files. I've done this with a few books written in different languages:

• I photographed the pages with my iPhone or scanner.
• I converted them into text with HandwritingOCR, saving the result in a text file.
• I translated the text with Google Translate, saving that result in the same text file.

But I have nothing left to digitize. So I changed my May 2026 task to "Download and categorize my Google Photos". I hadn't done that since March 2023!

Take these 4 steps to add tons of value to photos and genealogy document images.

Years ago my iPhone ran out of room to store new photos. I'd heard about Google Photos and started using it in 2013. A free account gives you 15 GB of storage, and 13 years of my photos take up one third of that. Since Google Photos is always backing up my photos for me, I can remove them from my iPhone if I want. My current phone has plenty of storage, but I'd rather streamline what's on there.

Keep in mind, anything you store on Google Photos is accessible via an app on your phone or the website. So all your photos are still portable.

I created several albums on Google Photos and assigned every photo to one of them. My albums have names like House, Woofie, Family, Cars, Maine 2021, and more. Then I went through the albums and downloaded everything newer than March 2023. But there's much more to do.

Let's concentrate on the genealogy-related photos today. I have lots of family photos and old photos sent to me by my cousins in texts:

• A typical downloaded photo saved from a text has a file name like 20200406_171047_1648666454076_001.jpg. You can see it begins with a date, but the rest isn't helpful.
• Other photos have names like IMG_3806.JPG. That's useless other than keeping photos in chronological order.
• Still other photos have names like 2592.heic. HEIC?

I found out HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Compression. These don't open on my computer the way JPGs do. For me, they launch Photoshop. I downloaded a free HEIC Viewer from the Microsoft Store, but it keeps asking me to rate it. While it can convert the HEIC files to JPGs, that capability isn't free. So I'm going to use Photoshop to do the conversion.

There are four steps we all need to take with our digital photos:

• Rename your photos to something meaningful. I can identify "DiAnn and Chris Summer 1992" a lot easier than "20211215_115628_1639588924940_001.jpg". I'd know which photo it was without seeing a thumbnail.
• Crop and enhance your photos as needed. Some of my photos from texts are screenshots that a cousin sent. I can crop out the surroundings. And if it's an old damaged photo, I can clean it up.
• Give your photos metadata. Metadata is information you enter into the photo's properties. This information stays with the photo file. It can include a title, tags, a comment, date taken, and more.
• File your photos to make finding them more intuitive. Since I categorized my Google Photos into albums, they're already in good folders. But I can make sub-folders. Then I can keep all the family photos from Bella's 2025 graduation party together.

Let's take a look at these four steps.

1. Rename your photos to something meaningful

I have four photos of my husband Paul and my late cousin Carmine, taken at my cousin Paula's birthday party in 2023. They're all in the HEIC format that iPhones use. My first step is to rename them to include the subjects. I'm keeping it simple: Paul Ohama and Carmine Mollica 1, 2, 3, and 4.

2. Crop and enhance your photos as needed

Opening the photos in Photoshop, I see the color is a bit yellow. When I clicked Image > Auto Color for each one, they looked much better. There's unnecessary space above their heads, so I can crop that out.

With these adjustments, I can save each image in JPG format with its new name. I'll delete the HEIC versions, knowing they're still out there on Google Photos.

3. Give your photos metadata

For years I've been adding metadata to my genealogy document images. I give them a title which carries over to Family Tree Maker when I drop them there. And I add comments that include the source citation.

Not long ago I learned something new about metadata from a video by Thomas MacEntee. You can add metadata to several files at once, as long as they're all getting the same metadata. So I will:

• Select these 4 photos
• Right-click and choose Properties
• Click the Details tab
• Fill in a shared title, the tag "family", a comment about where I took the photos, and the date I took the photos.
• Click Apply to save this metadata to all four files at once.

Having added family as a tag, I can now go to Windows File Explorer (or Finder on a Mac), and type tags:family in the search box. The four photos of Paul and Carmine are at the top of the results list. I'm new to using tags, so I'm keeping it simple for now.

4. File your photos to make finding them more intuitive

These are the only photos I took at cousin Paula's birthday party, so I won't put them in a sub-folder. But I have several photos from cousin Bella's graduation party. I'll give them their own sub-folder. Most of those photos are group shots. I can identify key people in the file name, and identify everyone in the Comments section of the metadata.

I have a lot of work to do, and the plan was to complete this project in May! I'll try to plow through the photos in a few long sessions or commit to an hour or two a day. Then it's on to my June 2026 project (I started it yesterday). That project, "Add more war casualties", was my April project until I reshuffled the deck.

Here's what's involved in the war casualties project. I have a spreadsheet of the men from my ancestral Italian hometowns who died in World War I. The province of Benevento has their actual military records online for download. I'll check to see which military records I haven't downloaded yet for men who are in my family tree. Then I'll add the record and its source citation to my tree.

Which family tree projects have you been putting off? Why not jump into one now and get the ball rolling?

Searching for an Ancestor By Name Is NOT Enough

I've been thinking a lot about why people have trouble with their genealogy research. I see people on Facebook every day asking family tree questions and hoping for the best. They give little or no details and keep the question generic. For example, someone may ask, "How can I find my grandfather's death record?" They don't state his name, when or where he died, or anything useful.

Here's what must be happening. People have seen TV commercials for Ancestry.com or episodes of "Who Do You Think You Are?", and they get the wrong idea. TV makes it look as if all you need to do is enter a name in the search box and boom! Everything's delivered right to you.

In particular, I'm seeing these generic questions in Italian genealogy groups. If they've used the Antenati Portal, I'll bet they've only tried a search-by-name. (The Antenati Portal is critical for Italian family tree research.) Or else they're expecting to find Italian records on Ancestry—and those are rare.

A generic genealogy question or a search-by-name won't help you with your family tree. Get specific!

Start at the Top

If you're new to genealogy, or a newcomer asks for your advice, here's what to do. Go to the FamilySearch Wiki and find out what records exist for the ancestor's place of origin.

For example, let's say the ancestor we want to find came from the Toledo province in Spain. The FamilySearch Wiki tells us that civil record-keeping began in 1871. Some towns began as early as 1837, but you'll need to know the town. The Wiki page for Toledo has a button for "Spain Online Genealogy Records". You can click that for a long list of links to different types of records.

Many times the document you need will not show up in a search-by-name. This is very true of the Italian Antenati Portal. Not all records are searchable. You may have to spend the time looking at individual record books. And that's why it's so important to learn where your ancestors came from.

Work Your Way Down

For the best results, you need to know not only the person's country of origin, but their town of birth. This way you can go straight to the right set of records and start looking. I always do it this way.

Many of you, of course, don't know your ancestor's town of birth. You may not even be sure of the country. Here's a trick I like to use. I used it again yesterday and had success.

Go to a site like Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage—whichever one you like. Do a search using nothing but your ancestor's last name and an approximate year of birth. Now narrow down the search results to show only immigration or naturalization records.

You may not get anywhere with your family tree without trying this simple genealogy trick.

Even if none of these people are your relatives, you can see where they came from. I did this years ago when I couldn't understand the name of my great grandmother's hometown. I knew what it sounded like when she said it, but I didn't know how to spell it, so I couldn't find it on the map. And her last name, Caruso, is too common.

But my search paid off. I saw one result that looked like it matched what she used to say. That turned out to be correct, and it opened up the floodgates. I've taken her family tree back as many as six generations in that same town.

Need a jumpstart? See "6 Places to Discover Your Ancestor's Town of Birth".

I appreciate that people want to find some distant cousin who can help them build their family tree. But you won't find that cousin if you don't know any specifics. Do the initial research to find out where your people came from. Then, if you want to reach out to people in a genealogy group, spell out the details! You're sure to find people who are willing to help.