1. Home
  2. Search Etymological origin of Italian surnames


Search Etymological origin of Italian surnames


BRIGANTE | BRIGANTI | BRIGHENTI

Brigante has a stock in Salento and one in the Salerno area that extends to the Neapolitan and Potentino neighbors, Briganti is absolutely Panitalian, Brighenti is typical of the Lombardy region, Veneto, Emilia, with a stock also in the Roman and Latin dialects, probably fruit of the forced Venetian emigration, addressed to the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, all these surnames should derive from nicknames originated from the Italian term brigante (attacker), that same term in medieval times was attributed to soldiers of fortune inserted in a force of about thirty men at soldo di a Connestabile, while according to others the term derives from the Celtic briga (high ground, fortified hill) and would mean a belonging to medieval Alpine military forces, only in later times did the term acquire the sense of a fat man and rogue, probably due to the behavior of those armed men previously mentioned, however, there is also the possibility that it is of a proper name inspired by the Celtic goddess Brigantia, protector of blacksmiths. additions provided by Luciano Comelli The surname Brighenti of the Latina area has no Venetian origins, although actually it actually exists also in Veneto and Trentino and has a typically Venetian sound, which, in my personal experience and not only, has deceived precisely in this sense. The surname BRIGHENTI present in Latina and its surroundings is in fact historically originating from the nearby hilly town of Sonnino, where with the Briganti variant it is very widespread, being very probably motivated by the historically well-documented phenomenon of brigandage (the village has been close for centuries of the so-called no-man's land, a wide border between the papal state and the Bourbon kingdom, destination and refuge for brigands and outlaws: still today, for playful parochialism, it is customary to call brigands the sonninesi in general). Only from Sonnino, an ancient hill town, was the surname spread to the capital with local emigration. I finally feel excluded that alongside Brighenti of Sonninese origin, certainly present in a large majority, there may exist some nucleus of Venetian origin, as in the list of Venetian pioneers (which, it is worth pointing out for history's sake, does not they emigrated in a forced way, if forcing do not consider hunger and destitution) recently reconstructed from the studies of the Association Veneto of the Pontine, this surname is absent. On the contrary, at least as far as I know, it cannot be ruled out that part of the Brighenti in the area of Pomezia, Ardea and Aprilia have distant Trentino origins: a complete study on the families of the Trentino-Bosnian settlers, although not many, in fact it is not has been prepared to date.

Bibliographic source' "L'origine dei cognomi Italianim storia ed etimologia" di E. Rossoni disponibile online su: https://archive.org/


Buy a heraldic document with your coat of arms


You may be interested

Heraldic dossiers
Notice:
  • When you buy a heraldic document a new accurate analysis of the heraldic research will be performed by an expert heraldist and the document will be written in Italian or English.
  • The coat of arms will be checked and, if necessary, redesigned in strict compliance with the heraldic rules by our experts.

Brighenti
Nobles: Italia (Emilia Romagna - Marche)
Nobility: Conti
Language of the text: Italiano

Verba Volant, Scripta Manent
(Spoken words fly away, written words remain)
Examples of Heraldic Documents
Order now a Professional Heraldic Document

Entrust the story of your family name to the heraldry professionals

Go to Catalog