Italian last names are generally nicknames, which became 'institutional’ in the Middle Ages. They typical refer to some characteristics of a family, like physical aspect, personality and attitude, profession, provenance, home location, name of the progenitor etc. Some are typical of foundlings: initially all foundlings in each city had a recurrent last name, later their last names were ‘invented’ in order to make the descendance from foundlings less obvious.
Traditionally, children take their last name from their father. This last name is the same for both male and female children. Italians last names are quite numerous (more than 300k), also because of regional variants and transcription mistakes.
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