Before becoming a surname, a word could be spoken aloud. In a street, in a workshop, outside church after Mass. It helped people understand one another: Giovanni with curly hair, Pietro the tall one, the family everyone called gentle. Then the phrase stayed. Children inherited it. Much later, it ended up in a register.
That is one possible path for surnames such as Ricci, Biondi, Mancini, Longo, Gentile and Grassi. They are easy words for us to read. That does not make their family history easy to rebuild. A nickname may have described one person, a very long time ago, rather than an entire family.
A picture of someone, not a definition of the family
Ricci immediately suggests hair. It is a natural association. Yet when you find the surname in your tree, you still do not know who that first “curly-haired” person was, or which century they lived in. It may have referred to an ancestor with wavy hair. It may have been established long before the parish records begin. It may even have followed a local path we can no longer see.
The same care is needed with Biondi and Biondo. Hair colour is an obvious possibility, but that does not make the two surnames related. In one town they may be spelling forms in the same line; in the next town they may belong to completely separate branches. No surname list can settle that. Records do, one step at a time.
Keep the exact spelling. Do not change Biondo into Biondi simply because the second form looks more common. Copy what is on the page: name, age, home, witnesses. Put together, those details are worth more than a resemblance between two words.
Mancini and Mancino: when a word points to a gesture
Mancini and Mancino recall the use of the left hand. In the past, a visible trait like that could be enough to identify a person among many people with the same first name. It is not hard to see how a nickname of this kind could stay in a town’s everyday speech.
There is a firm limit, though: you cannot infer anything about your ancestors’ character or health from the surname. That would be invented history. Look instead for signals that actually belong to your line: a recurring trade, a house, godparents who return, short moves between hamlets. The surname stays in the background and helps you ask better questions.
Tall, sturdy, courteous: words that change their tone
Longo and Longhi may recall height or a lean figure. Today it is natural to think of a physical description. It is plausible, but it is not the only route. Words travel, pronunciations change, and names settle into family forms. Some surnames also became fixed in several places without starting from the same person.
With Grassi and Grasso, one extra caution helps. The modern meaning can sound blunt, almost insulting. There is no reason to push today’s tone straight back into the past. Earlier words could carry different shades, and a surname remained even when its first meaning said nothing about the people who carried it.
Gentile and Gentili show the opposite problem. The word sounds positive: a well-mannered person, perhaps someone respected. It may be that. It may also connect to a personal name, local usage or a tradition that did not reach us. Surnames are old; our first impressions are much younger.
When the surname splits on paper
In older records, singular and plural forms are not always fixed. A priest may write Riccio in a baptism and Ricci in the marriage of the same family, especially before personal identity documents existed in their modern form. It can happen. It is not automatic.
So, while researching Riccio or Ricci, place the two forms side by side without merging them too soon. Do the same with Mancino and Mancini. When parents, home and the witness network match, the lead becomes stronger. When they all change, you may be looking at another family.
A practical search
Begin with the record closest to you and work backward in order. In birth records, note the home and the father’s occupation; in marriages, witnesses and origin; in deaths, the stated age. A nickname-based surname becomes useful when it sits beside these facts. Alone, it says little.
Keep a small list of every form you find, too. It does not have to be perfect. It only needs to help you find a spelling, a date, a parish again. Big turns in family history sometimes arrive this way: through one tiny difference that stayed at the bottom of a page for months.
Context matters more than the label
Imagine two men called Antonio Ricci, born only a few years apart. One appears in the same street again and again, works as a shoemaker and has a brother-in-law as witness. The other works the land, lives outside town and his children have different godparents. The surname is the same; the life that appears in the records is not. This is where research stops being a collection of names and starts to take shape.
When a person is hard to separate from another, try rebuilding the people around them. Brothers and sisters, neighbours, witnesses, people who appear at several marriages. You do not have to copy everything. Note the names that return. A family line often becomes clear through company, rather than through the surname on its own.
For short or widespread surnames, this check is even more useful. One page may contain a Longo and a Longhi, a Gentile and a Gentili. Treat them as nearby possibilities. A relationship will emerge, or it will not, through the records.
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