SURNAMES IN ITALY

Most Common Italian Surnames in the 21st Century

Most Common Italian Surnames in the 21st Century

Changes in the Top Italian Surnames

The change in the top Italian surnames reflects both demographic trends and social changes in Italy. Over the decades, the most common surnames in Italy have experienced fluctuations due to factors such as internal migration, social mobility, and birthrate trends.

Most common surnames in Italy at the end of the 20th century

The most common Italian surnames reflect the country’s rich history and cultural diversity. Among the most common are names like Rossi, Russo, Ferrari, Esposito, and Bianchi, which are spread throughout the Italian territory and beyond its borders. These surnames, rooted in tradition and family heritage, carry ancestral stories and legacies that go back centuries. Their prominence and frequency reflect the enduring influence of Italian culture in the world and the enduring connection that many have with their Italian ancestry.

In the 1980 ranking, the most common surnames in Italy were:

Rossi – Russo – Ferrari – Esposito – Bianchi – Romano – Colombo – Ricci – Marino – Greco – Bruno – Gallo – Conti – De Luca – Mancini – Costa – Giordano – Rizzo – Lombardi – Moretti – Barbieri – Fontana – Santoro – Mariani – Rinaldi – Caruso – Ferrara – Galli – Martini – Leone

Most common surnames in Italy at the beginning of the 21st century

Prof. Enzo Caffarelli conducted a comparison between the 1979 and 1999 rankings, observing some very interesting changes over the 20 years that passed between the two rankings.

Compared to the 1970s, when De Felice made the first ranking, the increase in telephone subscribers mainly affected the southern regions and islands of Italy, where the density of users (i.e., the ratio of telephone subscribers to the total number of citizens) was lower at that time. But this change in the top Italian surnames is explained by other reasons.

Demographic trends: “southernization” of surnames

While surnames like Rossi, Russo, and Ferrari have maintained a prominent position in the lists of the most common Italian surnames, other surnames may have gained or lost popularity depending on various regional and cultural factors.

The surnames that have risen in the top 20 have one thing in common: they are mainly or almost exclusively forms from southern Italy. In contrast, surnames with typical central-northern forms have declined in the rankings.

This phenomenon has two explanations:

  1. Internal migration from the South to the North.
  2. Different demographic trends that divide Italy into two:
    • the North and Center, with lower birth rates;
    • the South, where, on the contrary, the population growth rate is higher.

Caffarelli calls this process the southernization of surnames, meaning that the most common Italian surnames today have their origins in the South of the country.

Internal migrations, birth rate, and changes in the distribution of Italian surnames

Some surnames reflect emigration from the South to the North. For example:

  • The surname Russo, typically southern, now ranks sixth in Milan, whereas in 1979 it was fifteenth. Going further back, in a study conducted on the 1954 paper phone book in Milan, Russo was not even among the top 30.
  • In the municipality of Turin, Russo, which was sixth twenty years ago, surpassed Rossi and Rosso (typically Piedmontese).
  • In Genoa, Russo rose to the nineteenth position, whereas at the end of the 1900s, it was not even among the top thirty surnames.
A news article highlights this peculiarity of Italian surnames.

In the past, plural forms of surnames (ending in -i) were typical of central-northern Italy, giving the idea of belonging to a family; while singular forms were typically southern (in some cases also in Piedmont and Veneto). Currently, the ranking of surnames ending in -i is declining, while those ending in -o or -e are rising.

For example:

At the beginning of the 2000s, for every 100 people with the surname Grassi (plural), there were 84 with the surname Grasso (singular); currently, the ending -o is the most frequent.

The same happens with other pairs of surnames like Bianchi and Bianco, Lombardi and Lombardo, Conti and Conte, Martini and Martino, Leoni and Leone, etc.

Some southern surnames have advanced significantly in the Top 200:

From Campania and Sicily mainly come those surnames that were not among the top 200 in the 1970s ranking:

Among the surnames that no longer appear in the Top 200, some from the northern part of the country stand out:

  • Ferrero (ranked 83rd in 1979)
  • Parodi (typical of Liguria)
  • Beretta (Lombard)
  • Corti (Lombard)
  • Gori (Tuscan)
  • Innocenti (Tuscan)
  • Baldini (Emilian)
  • Rosso (Piedmontese)

Explore the Meaning of Italy’s Most Common Surnames

Rossi, Russo, Ferrari, Esposito and Bianchi are among the most common surnames in modern Italy, but their geographic distribution and historical origins are very different.

Many of the surnames listed below have dedicated entries in our Italian Surname Dictionary, where you can explore their meaning, origin, variants, distribution and bibliographic references.

Rankings of Italian surnames

There are several rankings, or lists, with common Italian surnames, the most known and providing interesting data on demographic changes in the country:

  • The ranking prepared by the late Emidio De Felice based on data provided by SIP (SocietĂ  Italiana per l’Esercizio Telefonico) in the years 1978-79.
  • The top list compiled by Enzo Caffarelli based on data from SEAT (SocietĂ  Elenchi ufficiali degli Abbonati al Telefono) in 1999.
  • A study conducted on the 1954 paper phone book in the Lombard capital by another renowned linguist, Dante Olivieri.
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