Anyone know why the last vowel on name changes?

[gennattasio]

Don't know if this is the correct forum to be asking this question. In my research I'm frequently seeing the last vowel of the name changing on the documents within a single family and was wondering if there was any reason for this. For instance, the father's name is Bruni and you then see his daughter's name is written as Bruno.

[BarbaraR]

NO...

Bruno is male
Bruna is female

[JamesBianco]

NO...

Bruno is male
Bruna is female

I believe he is referring to the surname, not the given name. I have seen the vowel change in my experience, but it always seemed sort of random, not gender specific.

[gennattasio]

Sorry, I didn't specify that I meant the last name. Someone told me that in Latin the i ending means belonging to. Can anyone confirm this?

[Biff83]

Sorry, I didn't specify that I meant the last name. Someone told me that in Latin the i ending means belonging to. Can anyone confirm this?

That's correct. In Latin there were five major cases with different endings:
Nominative
Genitive
Dative
Accusative
Ablative

The Genitive case shows possession and "i" is the singular masculine genitive ending for second declension nouns. For example:
amicus--friend
amici--of the friend or the friend's
Iosephus--Joseph
Iosephi--Joseph's

Biff

[Italysearcher]

My last name is Tatangelo, the plural is Tatangeli

The plural of Alonzo is ALonzi.

If you see the change when more than one family member is present it could be they were putting the plural form.
ie The ALonzo's declared...
Over time one form or the other was adopted.