If you’re named after a Sicilian City

The present-day island of Sicily has nine provinces.  Each province has a city, a ‘provincial seat’ that has the same name as the province.  These cities are: Palermo, Trapani, Agrigento (formerly Girgenti), Caltanissetta, Enna (formerly Castrogiovanni), Messina, Catania, Siracusa, and Ragusa.  My sense of the matter is that first the cities were named, and then the regions under their influence acquired the names of their major city.  This often leads to confusion for genealogic researchers. An immigrant, when asked where he was born, may have responded, for example “Caltanissetta”, leaving the researcher to figure out whether he meant one of the many towns, variously named, in the Province of Caltanissetta, or whether he actually was born in the city named Caltanissetta.  This puzzle is further complicated if the immigrant, responding to “Where did you come from?” answered “Palermo”, which is a seaport.  Did he mean he was born in the city of Palermo, or some other town in the Province of Palermo, or did he simply mean he 'came from' the port of Palermo, where he boarded the ship that took him to America? 

An interesting aspect of these city and provincial names is this:  many Sicilians (as well as Italian mainlanders) have surnames that are the same as those of these towns and provinces, or derivations of them (Siragusa for Siracusa; Rausa for Ragusa; Girgenti for Agrigento).  What does this mean?

Most folks simply accept their surnames without questioning their origins.  Some, with surnames like  Palermo, Messina, etc., assume that their distant ancestors came from the town or province bearing that name.  In my research experience, that has not always been the case.

To shed some light on this naming procedure, I used the Italian website http://www.cognomix.it/mappe-dei-cognomi-italiani/.  That site allows a search using any surname, and returns various “hits” including maps of Italy and Sicily like the ones below for the surname Messina, showing the modern-day distribution of surnames.  

So what does this all signify?  Some conclusions may be drawn.  As might be expected, the three most widely seen and numerous of these nine Sicilian place-surnames; Palermo, Catania and Messina, reflect the three Sicilian provinces with the largest populations.  In only one province, Catania, does the surname derived from that province occur more than it does in the other provinces.  The surname Castrogiovanni does occur more in Enna province than in any other.  But of the other seven surnames considered, each occurs most in a Sicilian province other than the one that bears the name:

The surname Caltanissetta occurs most in Palermo province, as do  the surnames Girgenti, Trapani and Siragusa.

But the surname Palermo occurs most not in that province, but in Trapani province.

The surname Siracusa occurs most in Messina province, while the surname Messina occurs most in Catania province, as does the surname Ragusa.

Of course, these are modern numbers; the distributions would have been different centuries ago, when surnames first began to be used.  And today, certainly, most of these surnames may be found not only in Italy and Sicily, but in America and all over the world.

One explanation of the anomalies presented above, I believe, is that in certain cases the surnames were given to foundlings, whose ancestral names were not known.  For centuries, in Sicily, foundlings were given stigmatic surnames by their discoverers: Proietto (castoff), Esposto (exposed), Trovato (found), and so on.  Even crueler names like Milingiana (eggplant) and Giumento (mare) were used, and townspeople knew immediately that children with those names were at best orphans, and at worst born out of wedlock.  Of course, when boys with these surnames matured and married, their children took the made-up surnames as valid, legitimate names, and their sons passed them on to their descendants, most of whom have no knowledge that somewhere in their distant ancestry was an abandoned child.

Eventually, laws were passed proscribing these unkind surnames, but milder ones could be just as damning: surnames like di Dio (of God), di Giugno (born in June), del Popolo (of the people), etc.  In some cases, such children were given the name of the town or province they were born in, a kind of generic surname.  However, more often, foundlings were given surnames derived from other, more distant towns or provinces.  Hence, a foundling in Palermo might be named Messina, while one in Messina might be named Siracusa.  While these names may today seem innocuous, in effect, they were as stigmatic as some of the more brusque names of previous times.  The reason?   Giving a child born in Palermo the surname Messina effectively labeled him or her as ‘from elsewhere’, that is, ‘a stranger’; that is, ‘a foundling’.

There is some evidence for another reason for 'place names as surnames':  During the Spanish Inquisition (during which Sicily was ruled by Spain), Jews were expelled from Sicily, or killed, or forced to (apparently) renounce their religion and accept Christianity.   Many changed their surnames in attempts to obscure their heritage, and took names reflecting their residency: Trapani or di Trapani, Palermo, Messina, etc.  Just as all 'Trapanis' are not descended from foundlings, neither are they necessarily originally of Jewish descent.  It is, however, a possibility.

Another possibility:  The 'place name as surname' may have originally been given to an individual as an ngiuria or nickname to indicate a similarity of mannerisms, appearance, or speech to a person from that place, e. g. 'Barese' (like someone from Bari), 'Palermitano' (like someone from Palermo), and so on.

Whether my theories are correct or not, whatever the origins of these ubiquitous surnames, today they’re recognized as marks of true sicilianità (Sicilian-ness); names to be proud of, echoing with memories of the homeland that sent forth daring pioneers to find a better life for their families in America.

Of course, there are many other place-name derived surnames, with the names of towns other than those of provincial capitals.  My experience has been that these surnames as well, generally occur outside of the province in which the town with the eponymous name lies.  The surname Vallelunga, for example, occurs most often in Palermo province, not in Caltanissetta, the province of  the town of Vallelunga; the town of Butera is also in Caltanissetta province, but the preponderance of Butera surnames is in Palermo and Agrigento provinces.  Mistretta is a town in Messina Province, yet the surname Mistretta occurs most often in Trapani Province, and the surname Gangi occurs most in Catania Province, not in Palermo Province, which has a town named Gangi; etc., etc.   Interestingly, some place-name derived surnames on the Appenine peninsula, outside of Sicily, exhibit the same anomaly.  The surname Calabrese is most common in Puglia, not Calabria province, and Pugliese is more common in Calabria than in Puglia!   And there are more folks named Napoli in Sicily than there are in the province of Napoli.  See the table below for information on a number of Sicilian place-named surnames.

Viva Caltanissetta, Enna, Castrogiovanni, Girgenti, Trapani, Siracusa, Siragusa, Palermo, Ragusa, Catania, and Messina!!!

SURNAME

PROVINCE
of eponymous town

PROVINCE
of most common occurrence

Cases where provinces DON'T match