Search Etymological origin of Italian surnames

CUCCI | CUCCIA | CUCCIO

Cucci is typically Pugliese, with strains also in the Cosenza area and in Sicily, in the Palermo area and in the Enna area, Cuccia, typically Sicilian, is of the Palermo in particular, Cuccio, also from Palermo, is specific to Palermo and Ficarazzi. additions provided by Stefano Ferrazzi - some information is taken from the site www.ancestry.com Origin arbëreshë, these surnames arise from different Italianizations of the Albanian surname Kuqi, which, taken from the root kuq, literally means red (for a more detailed explanation, see Russa): from the etymological point of view, in fact, it should be noted that the Albanian q has a sound that is difficult to adapt in Italian (the approximate pronunciation is that of an aspirated ch), so that, at the time of Italianizing the surname, it had to fall back on suffixes such as -ucci, -uccia and -uccio, more common in Italian onomastics (the same sometimes happens with names and surnames of Greek origin, when, that is, the letter k is adapted with a sweet c, as in the case of Kyriakos / Ciriaco and Kalokyris / Calaciura). From the historical point of view, however, the surnames Cucci and Cuccia appear both in Calabria and in Sicily as early as the mid-1400s, following the emigration of the brothers Giovanni and Basilio Reres (the sons of the noble Albanian leader Demetrio Reres); according to some research, moreover, it seems that at least a part of the Kuqi families came from Himarë, in the prefecture of Vlorë, from where he emigrated in the XV or XVI centuries. Without taking anything away from this hypothesis, however, it must be said that sometimes the surnames Cucci, Cuccia and Cuccio could also derive from the medieval name Cuccio, which, together with the female Cuccia, represents an apheretic hypocoristic name such as Enrico, Federico, Teodorico, Talarico , etc (all names ending in -co, often of Germanic origin): if it were valid, however, this hypothesis would be mostly in northern Italy, given the frequency of Albanian surnames scattered throughout the south (in fact, the strains more of these families are found in the South and, more importantly, they are typical of those provinces that historically have hosted several arbëreshë communities).

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