Gens-Italia  is an excellent site to use to see the distribution of your surname in Italy.  Some of you might remember it as the site Susan Sarandon used in the April 2010 episode of Who do You Think You Are? to help her get started on researching her roots. While I know I have written briefly about this site before I think it important to revisit how the site can be used as it has changed slightly.

Getting Started

To get started, you simply click on the word Cerca in the image and click the arrow or hit enter.  On the next screen you will see a small search bar which may have the words ‘cerca un cognome‘. Enter your surname and click on the button which says trova.  That’s pretty much it. A map of Italy should open up showing where the concentration of your surname is currently found.
Now if you have a common surname such as Rossi then it probably won’t help you much as the map is almost completely covered by circles. This means the name is extremely popular throughout all of Italy and found in 4541 towns. Now if you search a not so common surname such as Baldovini you will see that while it is primarily found in Central Italy it only appears 16 towns or villages. By clicking on the circles you will get a close up map of the region the name is found in and with the help of Google Maps you might even be able to zero in on the specific towns.

Searching the U.S.A.

You can also search for your name in the USA using the la mappa
Cerca anche in usa  feature. Another window appears with a search bar similar to the one above. This can can be really useful if you’re trying to determine not only where your ancestors originally emigrated from but to where those with the surname are currently living.  Once again enter Baldovini in the search bar and click trova.  The map shows there are currently only three states in which the name is prevalent.  But, if we translate the name to Baldwin, the American equivalent to Baldovini, it now becomes a totally different ball game with the name being distributed fairly evenly in almost every US state representing hundreds of people.

A quick search on Searching the Enhanced Ellis Island Database in One Step using Natale with no variation returns over 2300 persons with the surname arrived through Ellis Island between 1892-1924. By removing the letter e from the end of the name and searching again, the returns are over 3400. By doing a search using it as a first name, which does yield some variations, almost 15,000 hits are returned!
Using Gens-Italia, we find the surname is present in over 956 towns with the highest concentration in the regions of Campania and Lombardy. And of course, if we use Pagine Bianche [the Italian White Pages] to search the surname, we find that 3317 people are listed.

Let’s try the same thing with Grazia. Doing a quick search on Grazia, again with no variation, we find that 3282 immigrants with the surname entered through the New York port. Gens Italia returns the name is still present in 158 towns with the highest concentration in Emilia Romagna while there are only 423 persons listed in the Italian White pages.

The less popular Bifano still returns 119 hits on Ellis Island, found in 72 towns in Italy and 158 hits on the Italian White Pages.

As a side note – while extracting records from various towns in Reggio Calabria, I often noticed that the first names Natale and Natalina were given to persons born either near or on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. I also found that these births, and many births which took place in late December were not registered until January the following year so my advice is that if you are looking for someone named Natale and are having difficulty locating a birth record, try looking in the months of December and January.

Name Meaning and History – Bifano

Southern Italian: from the medieval personal name Epifanio, ultimately from Greek Epiphanios, a derivative of epiphainesthai ‘to appear’, a name typically given to children born on 6th January, with reference to the Christian festival of the Epiphany, which commemorates the manifestation of Christ to the Magi.

Source: Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

Name Meaning – Grazia

Italian form of Grace.

Source: A Dictionary of First Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0192800507

This post is dedicated to my good friend “Biff” and his family who I now consider a part of my very special Gente family. God Bless and Happy Holidays.

Bionaz – Valle d’Aosta

Conchin – Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Lombardy, Piemonte

De Pellegrin – Fruili-Venezia Giulia

De Sanctis – Abruzzo, Lazio, Lombardy

Orbel – Piemonte

Perin – Veneto, Lombardy

Rigonat – Fruili-Venezia Giulia

Schiff – Fruili-Venezia Giulia
Other surname endings found in Northern regions include:
Suffix

Region

Example

– otti/utti

Fruili, Lombardy

Pascutti

– otti/utti

Emilia Romagna, Lombardy, Trentino

Bortolotti

-aci/ecci/ucci

Tuscany

Ghelarducci

-ai

Lombardy, Tuscany

Mungai

-u, -as and -is

Sardinia

Piccinnu, Marras,

Floris, Melis
**Sources**
1. Italian Surname Database – accessed 6 Jul 2013
2. Gens-Italia – accessed 6 Jul 2013
3. Webpages by Stephen P. Morse , San Francisco – accessed 6 July 2013
4. Wikipedia – accessed 6 Jul 2013