Corsicans surnames are the surnames held by people who live on the island of Corsica in the Western Mediterranean and at the northern end of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The surnames here are historically rooted. Although the island is a part of France, and has been since 1768, for centuries prior to this the island was politically, socially, culturally and economically tied to Italy and in particular the Republic of Genoa which sold the island to the French states in the middle of the eighteenth century. The surname landscape of Corsica reflects this earlier history, as the vast majority of Corsican surnames are Italianate to this day rather than Francophone. In particular, Corsican surnames mirror those find in Genoa and the wider Ligurian region of north-western Italy, along with the Tuscany region further to the south-east of Liguria. Despite two and a half centuries of French rule Corsican surnames still reflect the island’s long ties to mainland Italy.
History of Corsican surnames
Although it is a part of France today, Corsica has always had much closer ties to Italy than France. The Romans joined it administratively to Sardinia and ruled those two islands as a province for a time. In the sixth century CE it was conquered by the Byzantines as part of their efforts to reclaim Italy after the fall of the Roman Empire. More importantly, in the High Middle Ages the island was a point of perennial contention between the Republic of Genoa in Liguria and the Republic of Pisa in Tuscany, with the two powerful trading republics vying for control of it. Eventually in 1284 the Genovese managed to establish themselves as the dominant power there following the Battle of Meloria with the Pisans in the Ligurian Sea.[1]
Thereafter the Republic of Genoa would control Corsica for nearly half a millennium with only a few limited interruptions during wars with Aragon and France and owing to sporadic Corsican nationalist movements. Across this lengthy period of Genovese dominance, the island experienced colonization and settlement by many Italians from the mainland and Ligurian surnames from Genoa, as well as Tuscan surnames from around Pisa and Florence, were transplanted to the island.[2]
The political situation changed profoundly in the middle of the eighteenth century when, after a lengthy period in which Corsican nationalists led by Pasquale Paoli had essentially ruled the island as an independent nation for over a decade from the mid-1750s, onwards, the government of Genoa decided to cut its losses and sell the island to France in 1768. The French quickly suppressed the Corsican nationalist movement and incorporated the island into the French state, but even a concerted policy of Gallicization in the decades that followed failed to have any major impact on the surname landscape. Thus, Corsican surnames down to the present day remain an offshoot of Italianate Ligurian and Tuscan surnames within the French state.[3]
Corsican naming conventions
Corsican surnames tend to follow many of the same conventions as Ligurian surnames owing to the close connections between Genoa, the dominant city of the Liguria region, and the island between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, the formative era of European surnames. These are not enormously different to most other Italian surnames, though there are some slight variations. For instance, a lot of Ligurian and Corsicans surnames end in ‘o’ and ‘e’. That said, the most common surnames of all on Corsica end in ‘i’, like Albertini and Luciani. This evinces the close connections the island has historically had as well with Tuscany and specifically with the republics of Pisa and Florence during the High Middle Ages and late medieval era.[4]
Some efforts were made by the French government in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to Gallicize Corsican society, surnames included. A prominent example of this modern Gallicization of Corsican surnames involves the island’s most famous son, Napoleon Bonaparte. The Bonapartes were of Italian heritage, tracing their roots to the Tuscany region of north-central Italy. For centuries they spelled their name Buonaparte with a ‘u’. Napoleon was born the year after France purchased Corsica from Genoa. A policy of Gallicization was quickly established which led to young Napoleon being sent to France to receive a military education when he was just ten years of age. Later in his life, when well into his twenties, after he abandoned his innate Corsican nationalism following the French Revolution, he began spelling his name without a ‘u’ as the more French-sounding Bonaparte. It is a good example of the subtle ways in which political changes can quite quickly begin to lead to changes in surname spelling and conventions. Yet, while this was the kind of change sought through the French policy of Gallicization on Corsica from the 1770s onwards, it did not have the intended effect when it comes to the island’s surnames.[5]
Most popular Corsican surnames
The dominance of Italian-derived surnames in Corsica down to the present day, despite over two and a half centuries of French rule, can be determined by examining the most common surnames in Corsica, which are as follows:
- Albertini
- Mattei
- Casanova
- Luciani
- Pietri
- Rossi
- Poli
- Paoli
- Filippi
- Santoni
- Calistri
- Colonna
- Fumaroli
- Agostini
- Negroni
These are all Italianate surnames. Indeed the list of the 100 most common surnames on the island of Corsica is dominated by Italianate names which evince the island’s long historical ties to Genoa and Tuscany. Conversely, within this list of the top 100 surnames amongst Corsicans one will only find a handful of Francophone names, notably Martin, which is the most common surname on mainland France.[6]
Famous people with Corsican surnames
- Pasquale Paoli – Paoli was the hero of Corsican nationalism in the middle of the eighteenth century, a figure who freed Corsica from Genovese rule in 1755, eventually leading to the Genovese sale of the island to France. He was also responsible for drafting the first modern constitution for the independent state which he envisaged Corsica becoming, decades before the US constitution was ratified in 1788 or the Polish constitution promulgated in 1791, the first modern, western constitutions.[7]
- Napoleon Bonaparte – Corsica’s most famous son. The Buonapartes were ultimately of Tuscan origin. Napoleon would later drop the ‘u’ from their surname to make it sound more French as he began his ascent to become First Consul of France and then Emperor of the French. The surname means ‘good match’ and is a descriptor surname with a somewhat ambiguous meaning.[8]
- Tino Rossi – One of the most successful dual French singer-actors of the mid-twentieth century. He originally came from Ajaccio, the foremost city of Corsica.[9]
- César Campinchi – A politician from Corsica who became a lawyer and then a politician in the early twentieth century. He subsequently served as the French Minister of the Marine and Minister of Justice between 1937 and 1940.[10]
See also
- Italy
- France
- Venezuela
- Ligurian surnames
- Puerto Rican surnames
- Sicilian surnames
- Venetian surnames
- Lombard surnames
- Italian surnames
- French surnames
- Sardinian surnames
- Apulian surnames
- Occitan surnames
- Italian emigration
- Italian ethnicity
- Roman surnames
- Catalan surnames
- American surnames
- Breton surnames
- Silesian surnames
- Alsatian surnames
Explore more about Corsican surnames
- France, Vital Records Index record collection on MyHeritage
- Filae Family Trees record collection on MyHeritage
- 1872 French Census record collection on MyHeritage
- France, Births and Baptisms record collection on MyHeritage
- France Deaths record collection on MyHeritage
- An overview of the massive new record collection from France at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30393118
- ↑ Ian B. Thompson, ‘Settlement and Conflict in Corsica’, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 3, No. 3, Settlement and Conflict in the Mediterranean World (1978), pp. 259–273.
- ↑ Geoffrey W. Rice, ‘Deceit and Distraction: Britain, France and the Corsican Crisis of 1768’, in The International History Review, Vol. 28, No. 2 (June, 2006), pp. 287–315.
- ↑ https://www.italyheritage.com/genealogy/surnames/regions/liguria/
- ↑ https://www.history.com/news/6-things-you-should-know-about-napoleon
- ↑ https://forebears.io/france/corsica/surnames
- ↑ Dorothy Carrington, ‘The Corsican Constitution of Pasquale Paoli (1755–1769)’, in The English Historical Review, Vol. 88, No. 348 (1973), pp. 481–503.
- ↑ Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great (London, 2015).
- ↑ https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Rossi-Tino.htm
- ↑ https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/sycomore/bio/(num_dept)/1406