Bonanno — Bonanno is a Sicilian and Southern Italian surname derived from the phrase buon anno (good year), an augural greeting wishing good fortune and prosperity. Such auspicious names — derived from new year greetings, christening blessings, or seasonal wishes — were common in medieval Italian naming practice, particularly in Sicily. The surname Bonanno is concentrated in Palermo province and across western Sicily.
History & Origins
Augural surnames — derived from blessings, good wishes, and auspicious phrases — form a distinctive category of Italian family names, particularly common in Sicily and Southern Italy. Buon anno (good year) was one of the most common new year greetings in medieval Italian, and the phrase gave rise to the personal name and then the surname Bonanno. The name is recorded in Sicilian notarial and civic records from the medieval period, with the earliest documented uses in Palermo and the western Sicilian provinces.
The Sicilian Heartland
Bonanno is most densely concentrated in Sicily, particularly in the province of Palermo. The name is also found in Trapani, Agrigento, and Messina provinces. A secondary concentration exists in Calabria, particularly in the province of Reggio Calabria. The Sicilian Bonanno families were part of the farming, artisan, and merchant communities of western Sicily — the same communities that produced the great emigration waves to the United States and Argentina between 1880 and 1930.
The Bonanno Name in America
Bonanno families emigrated to the United States in large numbers during the Italian diaspora of 1880–1930. They settled primarily in New York City — particularly in the Sicilian-American communities of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx — and in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. The name became widely known in twentieth-century America through the Bonanno crime family, one of the Five Families of the New York Mafia, whose founder Joseph Bonanno (1905–2002) was born in Castellammare del Golfo, Trapani province, Sicily. The overwhelming majority of Italian-Americans named Bonanno are entirely unconnected to organized crime and bear a name with a long, legitimate history of seven centuries in Sicilian civil life.
The Bonanno Diaspora
Bonanno families emigrated to the United States, Argentina, and Australia through the Italian diaspora of 1880–1930. In the United States, the largest concentrations are in New York (Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx), New Jersey, and Connecticut — the classic settlement pattern of the Sicilian emigrant wave. In Argentina, Bonanno families settled in Buenos Aires and the agricultural provinces, part of the large Sicilian-Argentine community centred on communities of Palermo province origin.
Genealogy Research Guide
Bonanno research focuses on the province of Palermo in western Sicily. Italian civil registration begins 1866; for earlier records, consult the State Archives of Palermo, which hold parish records from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. For US emigrants, Ellis Island records (1892 onward) and New York City Italian-American Catholic parish records are essential. The town of Castellammare del Golfo (Trapani province) is a particularly well-documented source of Bonanno emigrants to Brooklyn.
Notable People Named Bonanno
- Joseph Bonanno (1905–2002) — Sicilian-born organized crime figure who emigrated to the United States from Castellammare del Golfo, Trapani province. His memoir A Man of Honour (1983) offers a primary source on Sicilian emigrant life in New York in the early twentieth century.
- Bonanno family of Palermo — The broader Bonanno family of Palermo produced merchants, craftsmen, and civic figures across multiple centuries of Sicilian history, documented in the State Archives of Palermo from the medieval period onward.
Related Italian Surnames
Often found in the same regions and emigration records: