Pugliese Surnames

Puglia: The Agricultural South

Puglia — the long, flat region forming the heel of the Italian boot — is the most agricultural of Italy's southern regions. Unlike the mountainous terrain of Calabria and Abruzzo, Puglia is a landscape of ancient olive groves, durum wheat fields, and Adriatic coastline. Its cities — Bari, Lecce, Brindisi, Foggia, Taranto — are some of the oldest continuously inhabited places in Europe, many with roots in ancient Greek colonisation.

Puglia's emigration was primarily driven by the collapse of the agricultural economy in the early twentieth century — low wheat prices, absentee landlords, the destruction of local vineyards by the phylloxera parasite, and drought. The great latifundia of the Foggia plain had always employed seasonal labour from across the south; when these estates became economically unviable, the seasonal workers had nowhere to go but America.

The Greek Legacy in Pugliese Surnames

Like Calabria, Puglia has a Greek heritage dating back to Magna Graecia. The Griko-speaking communities of the Salento peninsula (the area around Lecce) maintained a Greek dialect into the twentieth century. Surnames from this area carry Greek roots: Pellegrino (pilgrim, from the Latin but with Greek cognates), place-name surnames from towns with Greek origins, and personal-name derived surnames from the Orthodox Christian calendar.

Norman and Crusader influences

Puglia was the main departure point for Crusaders sailing to the Holy Land — the port of Brindisi was where Frederick II of Hohenstaufen famously turned back from his promised Crusade, earning excommunication. This history left Norman French and German names in the regional surname pool: Dell'Aquila (of the eagle), Colonna (column; an aristocratic surname associated with the Roman Colonna family who held lands in Puglia), De Palma (of the palm; pilgrimage associations).

Distinctive Pugliese Surnames

• De Santis — of the saints; very common across Puglia and Campania
• De Palma — of the palm tree, or from a place called La Palma; also pilgrimage associations
• Laterza — from the town of Laterza in the province of Taranto
• Loiacono — from the Greek diákonos (deacon); specifically Pugliese
• Paradiso — paradise; originally a nickname for a good-natured person or someone who lived near a church called Paradiso
• Mastroianni — master Giovanni (John); an artisan or craftsman named Giovanni whose skill gave him a title
• Petruzzelli — from the given name Petruccio (little Peter); specifically Bari and its province
• Terlizzi — from the town of Terlizzi in the Bari province
• Nardella — from the given name Nardo (Leonardo/Bernardo); a characteristic Pugliese diminutive

Pugliese-Americans: Where They Settled

Pugliese immigrants concentrated differently from Sicilians and Neapolitans. Many went to Texas — particularly to the areas around Dallas and San Antonio — where agricultural labour was needed and land was cheap. Connecticut had a large Pugliese community centred on New Haven and Bridgeport. New York's Brooklyn received immigrants from Bari and Lecce who established distinct neighbourhoods separate from the Neapolitan and Sicilian communities already there.

Columbus Day, Italian Heritage Month, and Puglia

When Italian-Americans celebrate Columbus Day (October 12) and Italian-American Heritage Month, the celebrations draw on a pan-Italian identity that often obscures the remarkable regional diversity within Italian-American communities. Families from Puglia, Calabria, Abruzzo, Sicily, and Campania were not, in the early twentieth century, simply "Italian" — they were Barese, Calabrese, Abruzzese. They sometimes could not understand each other's dialects. The pan-Italian identity that Italian-Americans now share was largely forged in America, in the shared experience of immigration, discrimination, and the slow ascent into the middle class.