SURNAMES IN ITALY

Lossa

This form is a variant of the surname Losa.

Origin and meaning

E. Rossoni notes that Losa appears to be typical of the area comprising Bergamo, Lecco and Milan, and that it is an ancient surname: from 1580 a certain Bartolomeo Losa is documented in Turin as a representative of the city, and in 1640 the Knight Aleremo Losa appears in the same office. According to Rossoni, it could derive from the dialect word losa ("stone") or else from the aphaeresis of place names such as Mandolossa, in the province of Brescia.

In line with that etymology, the surname is held to derive from lausa, with the meaning "slab of slate", and it is linked to the Val San Martino, an area of Lombardy. Rossoni also mentions the variant Lossa, extremely rare, which would appear to be of Lombard or Piedmontese origin.

Variants

Geographic distribution: Lombardy, Piedmont

📍 You can view how this surname is distributed in Italy: View distribution in Italy (Cognomix)

Drawing on 2 authors, this entry presents the different hypotheses about the origin of the surname, avoiding a single oversimplified explanation.

Sources

This entry of the Italian Surname Meanings dictionary is based on the following specialized onomastic sources:

  • Rossoni, E. (2002). Origine e storia dei cognomi italiani. Retrieved from https://www.cognomiitaliani.org
  • Research conducted by Surnames in Italy, the English-language project of Ancestros Italianos, based on the bibliography cited in the references.