Sopranomi can be so annoying!!

[PianosiDiFano]

Sorry for a longer post! A lot of context (and some frustration) here:


I had one ancestor in my tree who was named Maria Ditomaso. Then I found the birth record of my 3rd great grandmother, it says her mother is Maria Ditomaso and the name Biagioni scratched out. So I do some research and I end up finding out she is Maria Biagioni detta Ditomaso. Ok, no problem.
Finding her death certificate, I notice she is now Maria Biagioni detta Sabbazio. She had three surnames not including her husband's name (Radi)!!!!
I have run into this issue numerous times.

Now I have this issue, please keep in mind this is the same area and time frame as the above example:

Annunziata Alegi is born in early 1816 in Fano to Domenico Alegi and Teresa Domeniconi.
I have found two members of this family, Remigio and Annunziata. On Annunziata's death record it says her mother was Teresa Domeniconi alias Mannoni, on Remigio's just Domeniconi.
There were only two Domenico Alegis on the 1813 census of Fano, cousins. One was too young to have been Annunziata's father. There are no Teresa Domeniconis, and I can't find many people with the surname Mannoni.
The older Domenico Alegi married Teresa TONI. All of her family member's records only ever say Toni, so I have never included her in the family... until recently, when I noticed her male family members listed in a conscription list as "Toni detto Domenicone." Note that for some reason, this writer usually chose to record the sopranomi in a "singular" form (wrote Biagione instead of Biagioni, Fuso instead of Fusi, etc.)

Further, Annunziata di Domenico Alegi married Domenico Peroni. Domenico Peroni was born, as I can tell, in a house not 300 or 400 metres away from where Domenico Alegi and Teresa Toni detta Domenicone lived.

Given the rarity of the surname Domeniconi there, the lack of any other Domco Alegis of reasonable age, the sopranome Domenicone, the proximity of the Alegi and Peroni families, and the fact that Teresa Toni had an infant sister named Annunziata who died in 1812, I have added the family to my tree.

My questions are this:
1. Does anyone think/not think this is a reasonable connection? It seems fairly solid to me but there are "pokeable" holes.

2. Does anyone have a better understanding of sopranomi? Why do people change their sopranomi throughout their life?

[Italysearcher]

Technically what you are seeing are not 'sopranome'. They are instances of people being known by another (sur)name. The birth record is the 'real' surname assigned at birth. Anything she added or became 'known as' will be described a such.
Sopranome are 'nicknames' given to a branch of a large family (who tend to use the same forename/surname combinations). So within the same family tree, the various branches are known by their surname/sopranome(nickname). In some areas it has become so repetitious that the sopranome has become part of the surname leading people to believe that they have a hyphenated surname, when, in fact, until very recently it was against the law to have two surnames.

[PianosiDiFano]

Thanks for taking the time to read & respond!
So the "detto" is not a sopranome? I understood this to be the sopranome, but perhaps it indicates the other surname this person or family goes by?
It seems people in this area were very inconsistent about their own names! The sopranome and cognome were often switched, or one was excluded, on their records.
Do you know if it is normal for surnames to be so hard to determine? I have noticed the issue extensively in the area I am researching but I have no knowledge of other parts of Italy!

[PippoM]

There was a time when surnames and "family nicknames" were quite interchangeble. Then, they were fixed by Civil registers, but that may hav happened at different times according on the area.
However, as a curiosity, there are some places in Italy where people have "detto" in their surname (for instance "Boscolo detto Todaro" as a surname) as you can read here:

https://corrieredelveneto.corriere.it/v ... 1779.shtml

[PianosiDiFano]

Thank you! This makes some sense, especially more sense in the Napoleonic times when registration was very new!
I have frequently seen surname and sopranome interchanged, but only a few times have I seen one person have so many names!
I guess this early confusion has created quite a few names...