Sicilian Last Names: Meanings, Origins & the 3,000 Years of Conquest Behind Them

Why Sicilian surnames are unlike any others in Italy

Most Italian surnames point, more or less, in one direction — a trade, a nickname, a nearby town. Sicilian surnames point in five directions at once. The island sat at the center of the Mediterranean for three thousand years, and almost everyone who mattered conquered it: Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, Spaniards — and, in the fifteenth century, waves of Albanian refugees. Each left names behind. A single Sicilian family name can carry an Arabic root inside a Latin spelling, filed under a Greek place, prefixed by a Spanish-era article.

That makes Sicilian last names the richest in Europe to decode — and the most rewarding to trace, because roughly nine in ten are specific to the island. If your family name is Sicilian, it is very likely only Sicilian, which is a gift when you go looking for the town your ancestors left.

This guide draws on the standard scholarly reference for the island's names — Girolamo Caracausi's Dizionario onomastico della Sicilia — to give you the real meanings, honestly flagged where scholars disagree, and to surface the one layer almost every other guide misses entirely: the Albanians of Sicily.

This is a companion to our complete guide to Italian surnames — start there for the five origin categories and the Ellis Island myth; this page goes deep on Sicily.

The 25 most common Sicilian surnames

The figures below come from Italian civil-registry data (via Cognomix) and count families, not individuals — multiply by roughly 2.5 for a sense of how many people carry each name.

The top of the list tells the whole story in miniature: Russo (a Latin nickname for red hair), Messina (a Greek place), Caruso (a Sicilian word for a mine-boy), Lombardo (a northern migrant), Marino (the sea). Five names, four different origin layers.

Layer 1 — The Greek foundation

Sicily was Magna Graecia, Greater Greece, from the eighth century BC, and Byzantine Greek-speakers held parts of the island into the Norman era. The Greek layer runs deep:

• Greco — simply "the Greek," marking Greek descent or adherence to the Byzantine rite.
• Messina — from the city, whose ancient Greek name Zancle / Messene meant "sickle," for the curved shape of its harbor.
• Foti — from Greek Photios, "light."
• Maffei / Maffeo — from the Doric Greek form of Matthew.
• Romeo — "pilgrim," from the Byzantine Greek term, common in northeastern Sicily and Calabria.

Endings in -aci and certain -eo forms often betray a Greek root.

Layer 2 — The Latin/Roman substratum

Beneath everything sits Latin, the language Sicily never fully lost. The most common island surnames are Latin at root: Russo (russus, red), Marino (marinus, of the sea, or the name Marinus), Vitale (Vitalis, "full of life"), Salvatore (Saviour), Bello / Bella (bellus, beautiful), Grasso (stout). These are nicknames and devotional names that crystallized into surnames after the Council of Trent required parish registers in the late 1500s.

Layer 3 — The Arab centuries (831–1091)

For roughly 250 years Sicily was an Arab emirate, and the island spoke Siculo-Arabic — an Arabic dialect whose only living descendant today is Maltese. The Arab layer is real but frequently exaggerated by popular name sites, so here we lean on the scholarship and flag what's debated.

Well-supported Arabic-origin Sicilian surnames include:

• Vadalà (and Badalà) — from the Arabic theophoric name ʿAbd Allāh, "servant of God."
• Sciortino — from Sicilian sciurta, "city watchman," from Arabic šurṭiyy, "policeman."
• Morabito — from Arabic murābiṭ, a holy man or hermit.
• Sodano — from Arabic sawdān (dark) or sultan.
• Favara — from Arabic fawwāra, "spring, fountain" (also a town name).
• Gangemi, Buscemi, Saladino, Zarcone — Arabic-rooted per onomastic dictionaries.

Debated (treat with caution): Zappalà and Fragalà are often given romantic "of God" translations, but the etymologies are contested and some proposed Arabic derivations fail on linguistic grounds. We mention them as possibly Arabic rather than asserting it.

And a correction worth making, because you'll see it repeated everywhere: Conti, Farina, and Rizzo are NOT Arabic. Conti is "counts" (Latin), Farina is "flour / miller" (Latin), Rizzo is "curly" (Latin ericius). Several popular sites miscategorize them; the scholarship does not.

Layer 4 — The Normans, Swabians, and Spanish

The Normans took Sicily in the eleventh century and Latinized it — Christianizing the administration and, over the 14th–15th centuries, pressuring Muslim families to Latinize their names. Norman/French-rooted surnames include De Luca, De Rosa, Provenzano, and Giuffrida (from the Norman-Germanic Goffredo, Geoffrey).

Then came the Aragonese and Spanish, who ruled for centuries. Their mark: Catalano ("the Catalan"), Randazzo, Mirabella, and Spanish-inflected forms of saints' names.

Layer 5 — The Albanians of Sicily (the layer everyone misses)

Here is the surprise. In the fifteenth century, as the Ottoman Empire overran the Balkans, Albanian refugees — the Arbëreshë — fled across the Adriatic and founded colonies in southern Italy and Sicily. The largest is Piana degli Albanesi, near Palermo, settled in 1488. Five centuries later, its people still speak Arbëresh (an old form of Albanian) and worship in the Byzantine rite.

If your surname is one of these, your roots are Albanian, not Italian, Greek, or Arab:

• Schirò, Matranga, Mandalà, Stassi, Cuccia, Petta, Plescia, Guzzetta, Camarda.

These names cluster in the Albanian towns and carry telltale traits — stressed final vowels (Schirò, Camalò) and the -sc- cluster. The Arbëreshë produced their own literary tradition: Lekë Matrënga (Luca Matranga, 1569–1619), whose 1592 catechism is the oldest Albanian text written in the diaspora. A Sicilian named Matranga today is, quite literally, carrying that history.

The La, Lo, and Li article-surnames

One feature instantly marks a surname as southern, usually Sicilian: the definite article fused to the front.

• Lo (masculine): Lo Russo, Lo Bianco, Lo Cascio, Lo Giudice ("the judge"), Lo Monaco ("the monk").
• La (feminine): La Rosa, La Barbera, La Mantia, La Piana.
• Li (plural): Li Causi, Li Greci.

Often the article sits in front of a trade or trait — Lo Giudice, the judge's household; La Rosa, the rose. Northerners almost never do this; it's a Sicilian and southern signature.

What your Sicilian surname can tell you — and how to trace it

Because around 90% of Sicilian surnames are specific to the island, a Sicilian name is an unusually strong lead for genealogy. The method:

1. 1.Recover the original spelling from ship manifests and naturalization papers (names were Americanized in the US, not "changed at Ellis Island" — see our main surnames guide).
2. 2.Read the layer. A Greek name (Greco, Foti), an Arabic one (Vadalà, Sciortino), an Albanian one (Schirò, Matranga), or a place-name (Messina, Catania, Siracusa) each points toward a different community and sometimes a specific town.
3. 3.Use the province clusters. Rizzo and Gambino lean Trapani; Caruso and Privitera, Catania; the Albanian names, the towns around Palermo.
4. 4.Go to the records. Sicilian civil registration began in 1820, parish registers from the late 1500s — both increasingly digitized on the Italian state's Antenati portal (Archivio di Stato di Palermo and others) and on FamilySearch, free.

If your name is on this page, it has survived three thousand years of conquest to reach you. Tracing it back is, in a real sense, reading the history of the Mediterranean through your own family.

The Alghini Institute's heritage archive can help you trace a Sicilian surname back to its comune.

Sources

• Girolamo Caracausi, Dizionario onomastico della Sicilia (Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani, Palermo, 1993).
• Emidio De Felice, Dizionario dei cognomi italiani (Mondadori, 1978).
• Enzo Caffarelli & Carla Marcato, I cognomi d'Italia (UTET, 2008).
• Cognomix.it / gens.labo.net (surname frequency data — families, not individuals).
• MyHeritage Wiki: Sicilian surnames, Italo-Albanian surnames; Italy Heritage (Piana degli Albanesi frequency list).
• University of Malta, "Late Medieval Maltese Surnames of Arabic and Greek Origin" (peer-reviewed; cites Caracausi).
• Behind the Name (Sicilian surname etymologies).