SURNAMES IN ITALY

Genealogical research in Italy

Genealogical research in Italy

Italian Genealogy – Discover Your Italian Roots

Italy’s rich history and culture make tracing your Italian roots an exciting adventure. Here’s a practical guide to help you build your Italian family tree using available record sources.

Getting Started with Your Genealogy Research

Most Italian immigrants arrived in the U.S. between 1880 and 1920, mainly from southern regions like Abruzzo, Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily. Many initially intended to return to Italy, but over time they settled permanently. Today, their descendants number in the millions across the U.S.

Searching for Information About Your Ancestors

Building your family tree starts with gathering basic information:

  • Full original name
  • Approximate date of birth
  • Town of birth

Interviewing relatives is crucial, especially since many Italian Americans are only two or three generations removed from their immigrant ancestors. Knowing the correct town of origin is essential, as many towns in Italy share similar names.

Key Questions to Identify Your Ancestors

  • What was their full name, birth date, and birthplace?
  • Who were their parents?
  • Whom did they marry, where, and when?
  • Where and when did they pass away?

First Steps to Finding Information

  • Talk to all your relatives and be persistent — small details might be key!
  • Build your family tree to identify gaps.
  • Review family documents: birth, marriage, death, immigration, military, and naturalization records.
  • Find maiden names of women in your family to expand the tree.
  • Connect with others researching the same town or area via social networks.

What we need to know about Italian Genealogy?

A colleague use to say that genealogy without documents is mythology, and it’s precisely there where our passion is targeted: to discover documents about our ancestors.

  • First, we need to get information about the Italian documents where we could find records about our forbears, for instance:  Civil Records, parish records, census, military records, titles of property, etc.
  • Going forward we’ll need to understand how the Italian Archives are organized, especially if we are thinking about a travel to Italy to search for records personally.
  • Every Italian region has suffered particular historical situations, generating their own type of documents.  We are going to analyze every one of them little by little. For a better understanding of these documents, we need to know about the political and social changes on the age our grandparents lived.

Research in the archives

If one’s ancestors left Italy after about 1866, and their last place of residence is known, it is recommended that one write to the Ufficio Anagrafe (Registry Office) there and request a cerificato di stato di famiglia (family certificate showing the date and place of birth of each family member).

The next step is to write to the Ufficio dello Stato Civile (Civil Registration Office) of the towns where members of ancestral families lived and to request extracts of their birth, marriage and death records. When the above mentioned records are not available, one writes to the priest of the parish where one’s ancestors lived to request extracts of their baptism, marriage and burial records.

Navigating Italian Genealogical Records

Italian genealogical records are a treasure trove of information, and today many of them can be accessed online. By learning where to look — from civil registries to parish archives — and how to read these documents, you’ll be able to piece together your Italian family history more easily.

Italian Surnames

An Italian surname can often provide valuable clues about a family’s place of origin. Certain surnames are strongly associated with specific regions, provinces, or even towns in Italy. Understanding the distribution and meaning of a surname can be an important first step in narrowing down where your ancestors came from.

Learn Italian

We had to add this one. What is the most important thing you can do to ensure you get the most from some of the services on offer, write correctly to authorities in Italy and understand the documents you discover? Yes….. learn Italian!

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