Five historical books, two private registers, and one rule: every etymology and every record on this site carries its source and its page.
The Five Books
1. Alessandro Bongioanni — Nomi e cognomi (1928)
Alessandro Bongioanni, Nomi e cognomi, 1928.
The backbone of our etymological dictionary: patronymic, dialect and augural-name roots across all Italian regions, cited page by page. In the public domain in Italy since 2002 and in the United States since 2024.
2. Luigi Cibrario — Dell’origine dei cognomi (1827)
Luigi Cibrario, Dell’origine dei cognomi, 1827.
The earliest house source: nicknames, civic offices, feats of arms and the noble lineages of Piedmont, Venice and the Italian communes.
3. G.B. di Crollalanza — Dizionario storico-blasonico (1888–1890)
Giovan Battista di Crollalanza, Dizionario storico-blasonico delle famiglie nobili e notabili italiane estinte e fiorenti, 3 vols., 1888–1890; volume III and Appendix are cited on this site.
The heraldic layer: lineages, fiefs and blazons behind the noble and patrician surnames of the peninsula.
4. Giuseppe Valentinelli — Bibliografia del Friuli (1861)
Giuseppe Valentinelli, Bibliografia del Friuli, 1861.
The Friuli key: feudal consortia, patriciates and the learned families of Udine, Gorizia, Pordenone and the Patriarchate of Aquileia.
5. Adriano Cappelli — Lexicon abbreviaturarum (1929)
Adriano Cappelli, Lexicon abbreviaturarum. Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane usate nelle carte e codici specialmente del medio-evo riprodotte con oltre 14000 segni incisi, terza edizione riveduta e corretta, Milano, Ulrico Hoepli, 1929 (Manuali Hoepli).
The key that opens the registers: over 14,000 engraved signs. Every abbreviation explained on this site carries the sign and the page of this edition.
The House Registers
6. The Master Archive — 20,000+ verified names
A private prosopographical database built during the pandemic years (2020–2021), mapping over 20,000 individual lives across Sicily, Calabria and the Italian Peninsula through original parish, civil and notarial records.
Not an index scraped from the web: a hand-verified archive of births, marriages, deaths, riveli and marginalia — the foundation of the verified layer on the surname map.
7. The Professional Register — 13,000+ client cases
Twenty years of commissioned genealogical research across the Italian Peninsula: parish registers, civil records, notarial files and military archives read page by page for families in the diaspora.
Combined with the Master Archive, it forms a prosopographical database of over 33,000 verified individuals — the silent engine behind every on-site research conducted today.
Archival fonds read in person
Sicily and Calabria: the deep roots
- State and parish archives of the Mezzogiorno: the starting point of my journey, researching my own family tree through riveli, catasti onciari and centuries of parish registers.
Across the Peninsula
- State Archives, Diocesan Archives and parish sacristies across Italy: from the northern plains to the southern coasts, the paper is read page by page.
Cataloguing in progress: the house registers add a fonds with every case; this list grows as the shelves grow.
See the sources at work
- The Surname Map — the verified layer is built from these books and from the house registers.
- The Method — how the paper is read, page by page, in the reading rooms.
- Mangano of Palermo — a house-fonds room where the citations become a family story.
- Send your documents — the reading room opens for your family, too.