Italian Name - Surnames

Surnames

Italy and Italians have the largest collection of surnames (cognomi) of any ethnicity in the world, with over 350,000. Men—except slaves—in ancient Rome always had hereditary surnames, i.e., nomen (clan name) and cognomen (side-clan name). However, the multi-name tradition was lost by the Middle Ages and it was not until the 1564 Council of Trento that registration of baptisms and marriages became mandatory in parishes. Outside the aristocracy, where surnames were often patronymic or those of manors or fiefs, most Italians began to assume hereditary surnames around 1450.