Gatto

History & Origin

Animal nicknames were common throughout medieval Italy, applied to individuals or families whose characteristics — real or imagined — resembled those of the animal. The cat, or gatto, was associated with cunning, independence, and nocturnal alertness. Whether a Gatto ancestor earned the name through his personality, his occupation (perhaps catching vermin), or simply his resemblance to a cat in the eyes of his neighbours, the nickname became hereditary and crossed the ocean with the great Italian emigration.

The Gatto surname is concentrated in Sicily and Campania — particularly the provinces of Palermo, Catania, and Naples. Like most southern Italian surnames, it was carried to America by emigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The surname appears in US census records from the early 1900s, clustered in the Italian-American communities of New York and New Jersey.

There is a medieval Catalan-Sicilian noble family called Gatto de Catania, recorded in Sicilian documents from the thirteenth century, though most modern bearers of the surname are of peasant or artisan descent rather than of that aristocratic line.

In contemporary Italy, the Gatto surname remains most common in Palermo and Catania provinces in Sicily, and in the Naples area in Campania — reflecting the demographic patterns of the old emigrant communities. Families with the name in America are overwhelmingly descended from Sicilian or Campanian emigrants.

In the Diaspora

If your family name is Gatto, you carry a surname that has been in use in Sicily and Campania for centuries — a simple, vivid animal nickname that says something about an ancestor's character or reputation, and that made the Atlantic crossing to become part of Italian-American life in New York, New Jersey, and beyond.

Spelling Variants

The Gatto surname appears in various forms across Italy and its diaspora:

• Gatti
• Gatta
• Del Gatto
• Gattini
• Lo Gatto