| Meaning | From Italian gatto — cat; a nickname surname for someone cat-like in manner or appearance |
| Origin type | Nickname / descriptive |
| Popularity | Common in northern Italy; significant in Italian-America |
| Regions | Milan, Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna |
| Variants | Gatto, Gattullo, Gattuso, Gattini |
| Notable bearers | Danilo Gatti (conductor); Gennaro Gattuso (footballer) |
Gatti is the plural form of gatto, the Italian word for cat — one of the many animal-based nickname surnames that proliferated throughout medieval Italy. Animal nicknames were a common way of distinguishing individuals in the crowded urban environments of the Italian city-states: a person with cat-like eyes, a stealthy walk, nocturnal habits, or particular cunning might accumulate the nickname il gatto (the cat) and pass it to their children as a hereditary surname.
The name is primarily associated with northern Italy — Milan, Lombardy, and Piedmont in particular. The plural form (Gatti rather than Gatto) suggests that the name may have been adopted by an entire family group rather than derived from a single individual nickname. In Piedmont the name is well established, and the Piedmontese form of the name has remained distinct from the more southerly Gatto surname, which shares the same animal root but has a separate distribution concentrated in Campania and Sicily.
The most celebrated contemporary bearer is Gennaro Gattuso (born 1978), the Calabrian footballer who played for AC Milan and the Italian national team — though his name uses the southern form Gattuso rather than the northern Gatti. Danilo Gatti, the Italian conductor, represents the northern tradition of the name.
In the great Italian-American emigration of 1880–1920, Gatti families from Lombardy and Piedmont joined the emigrant stream — though the northern Italian emigrant communities were less concentrated in the classic southern Italian-American enclaves of New York and New Jersey. Northern Italian emigrants from cities like Milan and Turin tended to be more skilled workers and artisans, and their communities in America were sometimes separate from the larger Sicilian and Neapolitan communities.
Italian-American Gatti families are found primarily in the northeastern states, with concentrations in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. The name also appears in South America — particularly in Argentina and Brazil, which received large waves of northern Italian emigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Italian communities of Buenos Aires and São Paulo include significant Gatti presences.
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