Meaning of my surname 'Pignatelli'

[jas6711]

i'm from san marco in lamis, if that is any help.

[liviomoreno]

Duplicate...
See http://italiangenealogy.tardio.com/Foru ... 16015.html

[Pigman]

Hey Jas6711,

Do you think Pigman could be an Anglized version of the Pignatelli Name?
My y-dna came back Italian and there are family stories that my immigrant ancestor came to America in the late 1600's from Italy and had to leave there because of political reasons. There are other stories that we were a French family. I think maybe a French speaking family from the area of Piedmont/Pignerolo Italy.

[PeterTimber]

Pignatelli is a derivation of the base surname PIGNATA.

The surname with its variants,m alterations and derivations are spread thruout southern Italy. Pignatelli is centered around Napoli coming from a famous family of the 11th century while other spellings are found up North in Emilia Romagna PIGNATTI or PIGNATTINI while in Venice it is spelt PIGNAT. All this being derived from cooking pot manufacturing as well as nicknames becoming surnames from those physically fat. Your specific re
PIGNEROLO may very well be of french origin since it is not listed in the Italian surname dictionary and can very well be an imported surname and Italianized accordingly.

PIGNATELLI has four distinct family crests published in www.Stemmario.it and click on each of the four for additonal information. =Peter=

=Peter=

[Pigman]

Thanks Peter,

I now am thinking my ancestor could possibly have come from Pigna, Liguria District in Northern Italy. The area was a part of France under Louis XIV and was certainly an area of religious persecution. The Pigna from my research is a pine cone. It was used as a symbol of eternal life and as a fertility symbol. The Christian version of the pine cone and the pine bough is of course the Christmas tree. Of course there is the Rione IX Pigna of Rome which feature the huge bronze pine cone which is said to have resided on top of the Pantheon.

Do you have any suggestions as to where I could look in Italian records for John Pigman or the Italian/French spelling could have been Giovanni or Jean Pigna or Pignan? Would the records be kept in a church in Pigna, Italy or maybe in Genoa?

Curtis Pigman

[PeterTimber]

Now its research. Try www.familysearch.org under ancestor search for the spellings of interest to you which may show the geography of the names of interest to you. =Peter=

[PeterTimber]

any luck? =Peter=

[Pigman]

Thanks for your interest!

I have found a Pigna family in Lorraine, France and I posted some inquires on the Lorraine board but not much luck there yet.

Additionally I posted a question to the ask a linguist board but the reply was that they did not provide that type of service (oh no! another genealogy question!)

Here is the question about suffixes from Italian to French I posted to them. Perhaps you know about the differences in the languages:

I have been researching my surname Pigman for a very long time and I recently found out through Y-dna testing that we were/are Italian. This fits in with family stories that our ancestor came to the colonies in the late 1600's from the ''old country'' because of political troubles. Some say we came from France and others say we came from Italy. There is a village Pignan, Languedoc, France which is a possibility and there is also a village called Pigna, Liguria, Italy (on the border with France). This was a part of France under Louis XIV.

My question: Does the French suffix Pign(an)mean the people of Pigna such as a Bostonian is from Boston? Also, would the suffix Pig(man) mean a person from Pigna? The n could have been changed to an m either on purpose or accidentally by the British. Incidentally my research indicates that Pigna is a pine cone and of course the g is silent and I believe the g is silent in French in the context of the name/village Pignan? This would sound something like Pinyon if I am correct.

Curtis

[PeterTimber]

This is beyond my knowledge. sorry. =Peter=