Italian Last Names (Cognomi Italiani)

More than 30,000 surnames currently used in Italy. Most of those surnames have a foreign origin, as for instance, HASSAN, an Arabian last name.
With every surname, you’ll find an access to external links containing information about them: where the surname is geographically located in Italy, how it’s distributed into provinces; its meaning, its origin and its coat of arms (in the case of having one).
About the surnames’ coats of arms, it’s important to figure out that not all surnames have a coat of arms. Coats of arms do not represent a surname, but a specific family carrying that coat of arms. On the other hand, nobility, at our ancestor’s age was only a very low percentage of the population. I recommend you to read my friend Pablo Briand’s post alerting us about Genealogy Frauds.

There’s also an interesting point about misspelled surnames because of immigration issues. You’ll find in this list several variations of the same surname.
Actually, we’re working on uploading more surnames on this database.

Last names meaning:

Clicking on these links you’ll be able to see your last name meaning, according to Cognomi Italiani. When meanings not found, it’s because that last name was not investigated or was misspelled due to immigration issues into another countries.
Cognomi Italiani website it’s the most lengthy and complete one about Italian surnames. Unfortunately it doesn’t have a search engine, so we need to use Google to locate in what section of the page the surname is, provided that that last name is showing up amongst the searched surnames. 

Geographical distribution of surnames in Italy:

Clicking on these links you’ll be able to see where surnames are located in different Italian regions, according to the GENS searcher. The GENS search engine displays how last names are distributed around Italy. This search engine was built based on the Italian Phone Directory.
European countries, as Italy, have been along the centuries populated by different ethnical groups, with different cultures and languages. It led to the development of also different dialects.  By consequence, many surnames where shaped by regional language characteristics. 
In brief: some Italian last names are very common and spread by the whole country, and other last names are geographically located in only a couple of departments.