Buffa

History & Origin

Buffa derives from the Italian buffo, meaning funny, comic, or clownish — a word that entered Italian from Old French or Germanic roots and gave rise to the operatic term opera buffa (comic opera), which was itself a southern Italian development of the eighteenth century. The word buffo described a person who was naturally comic, a jester, or someone who made others laugh — a quality that in medieval Italy could earn both admiration and ridicule in equal measure.

Nickname surnames of this type — where a personal characteristic becomes the family name — are extremely common throughout Italy and reflect the vivid, direct naming conventions of Italian village culture. A man known as il buffo (the funny one) in his community would pass this tag to his children, who became the Buffa family. The feminine form Buffa (rather than Buffo) may reflect regional dialects where adjective forms differ from standard Italian.

The name is most strongly associated with Sicily and Calabria in the south — the regions that supplied the largest waves of Italian emigrants to America between 1880 and 1924. The Sicilian-American community, centred on New York and New Jersey, absorbed many families from these regions.

The word buffo has had a rich cultural afterlife. The opera buffa — comic opera as opposed to the serious opera seria — was developed in Naples in the early eighteenth century and spread throughout Europe. A Buffa family thus carries, in their name, a connection to one of Italy's most distinctive contributions to European cultural life.

In the Diaspora

Buffa families in America are concentrated in the northeastern states, reflecting Sicilian emigration patterns. The name is uncommon enough that most American Buffas can trace their ancestry to a relatively small number of Sicilian or Calabrian villages.

Spelling Variants

• Buffo
• Buffone
• Buffoni
• La Buffa