Somewhere in a ship’s manifest, your great-grandfather is filed under the wrong flag. Somewhere in a DNA match list, a cousin shares zero centimorgans with you and is still your cousin. And somewhere in between, a surname sits scattered across three provinces with no reason anyone can give you. Three free benches in this reading room answer all three riddles in under a minute — and then tell you, honestly, exactly where their answers stop and the archive’s begin.
Where in Italy does your surname actually live?
A surname is a clue with coordinates. The house’s surname map plots two layers side by side: verified family distributions documented in field research — households, not hits — and aggregated historical index occurrences, the places a name merely appears in records. Search any surname: circles light up where the name is documented, the national panel counts verified households against indexes, and the etymology card tells you what the name itself remembers.
One screen answers what a dozen archive queries would only hint at — and the deep-link (?s=yourname) lets you send a relative the exact map you are looking at.
Open the surname map →Was your Italian ancestor actually Italian?
If his village sat in Trentino, South Tyrol, Trieste, Gorizia or Istria, then until 1918 the answer was no: Vienna levied his class under the Habsburg military law of 21 December 1867, and the uniform in the family photo — if anyone ever finds it — would be Habsburg, not Savoy. This is why American manifests file whole valley families as “Austrian” while the family memory insists “Italian”. Both are true. The border moved; the people didn’t.
The military bench reads that century for you. Enter the birth year you already have — from a tombstone, a manifest, a family letter — and the board lights up every conflict his class could have been called to: ten wars from the Risorgimento to 1945, each with its levy window (enrolled at eighteen, liable to forty-five, per Royal Decree 1481 of 1907), the sovereign at his birth and at his coming of age, and the region-by-region conditions: who drafted him, who exempted him, who claimed him for another empire.
Check his century now →How much of your great-grandmother actually lives in you?
The arithmetic is merciless and beautiful: half from each parent, a quarter from each grandparent, 12.5% from a great-grandparent, 6.25% from a trisavolo. By the sixth generation the average share is 1.56% — and there is a real, growing chance it is exactly zero. Your fourth great-grandmother can be entirely real in the parish register and entirely absent from your DNA test. Both facts are true at once.
The DNA decoder computes that decay for any relationship you can name: the statistical share with its honest centimorgan range (Shared cM Project), the kinship degree under the Italian Civil Code (articles 74–76) and under Catholic canon law — the two calendars of kinship that decided marriages, dispensations and inheritances — and a generation-by-generation decay board that shows precisely where the biology goes silent and the paper takes over.
Measure the share now →Three benches. One minute. No email, no signup, no obligation.
Free forever: the questions are the gift. The answers that follow — the foglio matricolare, the baptismal act — are the work.
Where the name lives
Two layers, one map: verified field-research households and aggregated historical indexes, comune by comune.
- Verified diffusion vs index presence — the gap between them is where research begins.
- National totals panel and a per-surname etymology card.
- Shareable deep-links: ?s=yourname opens the exact map you see.
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Which flag, which war
Enter a birth year: the board lights up every conflict his class could have been called to, region by region.
- Sovereignty at birth and at the coming of age — the border that moved inside a childhood.
- Ten conflicts, from the Risorgimento to 1945, each with its levy window.
- The Habsburg uniform of Trentino and the Julian provinces — and why the manifest says “Austrian”.
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How much of that relative lives in you
Choose the relationship: average share, civil and canon-law degrees, and the decay board across generations.
- Statistical autosomal share with the honest ranges — including the chance of zero.
- Italian Civil Code degrees and Catholic canon-law degrees, side by side.
- The dropoff threshold: where the paper ancestor outlives the genetic one.
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Key takeaways
- The surname map separates two evidences: verified field-research households and aggregated historical index occurrences — a name’s presence in an index is not yet a family.
- Italian levy classes were enrolled at eighteen and liable to forty-five (Royal Decree 24 December 1907, n. 1481).
- Trentino, South Tyrol, Trieste, Gorizia and Istria were levied by Austria-Hungary until 1918; their Great War soldiers fought in Habsburg uniform, which is why pre-1918 US manifests say “Austrian”.
- Autosomal DNA halves at every transmission: about 6.25% from a 2nd great-grandparent, about 1.56% from a 4th, with a real probability of zero beyond.
- Kinship degrees differ by calendar: the Italian Civil Code counts the births in both lines (art. 75); canon law counts the distance from the common root.
- All three tools give clues, never conclusions: the foglio matricolare, the parish register and the notarial act are the proofs.
Questions families ask first
Where in Italy does my surname come from?
Search it in the surname map: verified diffusion shows where documented families live; historical indexes show where the name merely appears. The distance between the two layers is where real research begins.
Was my Trentino ancestor Italian or Austrian?
An Austrian subject until 1918, Italian after. Manifests before 1918 usually read “Austrian”; the family memory reads “Italian”. The military bench shows which uniform his birth year owed.
Which wars could my great-grandfather have fought?
Enter his birth year in the military checker: it returns every conflict falling inside his 18–45 levy window, with the service conditions of his region of origin.
How much DNA do I share with a second cousin?
About 3.1% on average (roughly 230 cM), with a real range from 46 to 515 cM. Ranges, not averages, are what matter — and the decoder shows both.
Can DNA prove my Italian line?
No. DNA suggests; registers prove. The tools tell you exactly which register to ask for, and the house retrieves it.
Read how the archive answers: the Method · Bring your year and your question: Contact