Find Your Family Name In Historical Documents
Spelling Confusion
Confusion about my surname began at the very start of my family history quest. I have a scanned image of a letter written by my paternal grandfather's older sister in 1947. It's a very sad letter about the hardships her family were facing just a couple of years after the end of World War II. She asks my grandfather why he hasn't written, and asks him to send some fabric so her husband could have a new suit made. There's a lot of interesting information in this letter, but what puzzled me the most was she signed it "Maria Aggazio." In all of the US documents I could find, the name was always spelled as "Agazio" with one "g," and my family in Colorado had never seen it written as the letter shows.
My first step was to try and find my grandfather's port of entry into the Canada, and then into the US to see how he spelled his last name in those official documents. Unfortunately, I can't find anything documenting his arrival to a Canadian port nor his crossing the border into the US - which leads me to believe he was an illegal alien (the subject of a future post if I can ever finish it).
I was still very new at genealogy and had no idea Family History Centers existed let alone that they had microfilmed the civil records of most of southern Italy. I discovered this by accident when a very nice person visited my family history website and said she had transcribed most of the civil records in my grandfather's birthplace (San Giovanni in Fiore) and said she found many entries for my grandfather's family when she searched. You can read about the many interesting items she found here but the key item was the spelling of my family's name in the civil records were not consistent - sometimes it was spelled with one "g" and sometimes with two, but I still wasn't sure which one was correct. (by the way, I have since reviewed these civil records myself and verified the info this nice lady gave me was accurate)
While the civil records didn't solve the name spelling issue, they did give me other clues to investigate. I discovered my grandfather's father was married three times and had quite a few children (my grandfather was from the middle wife). I searched records (Ellis Island) to see if any of my grandfather's siblings immigrated to the US and found a potential match in 1920 - the name, Sarafina Aggazio, was correct along with date and place of birth. I ended up locating and contacting Sarafina's descendants in Wheeling, West Virginia, and after comparing information, we agreed we were related.
I was finally able to determine the correct spelling of my last name when my newfound West Virginia relatives got me into contact with the descendant of Sarafina's younger sister, who immigrated from San Giovanni in Fiore to Canada in the late 1960's - I learned the correct spelling of the name was indeed "Aggazio." The mystery still remains however, of why my grandfather spelled it differently. (note: the name spelling thing is what really got me addicted to genealogy...I just had to know!)
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Name Origin
I never thought of my surname's origin until I had my Y-DNA tested. You can read about it at the link, but basically the results tell me my paternal family is descendant from the Berber people of North Africa. This kind of surprised me, but it actually made sense because Islamic Armies were all over southern Italy for about 3 centuries and I'm sure there was a lot of mixing and mingling going on. I got an interesting email one day from a person who said my surname may have originated from the Arabic word "Ghazi"...click on the link and you can see the definition of the word and hear how it's pronounced - I may have had a Holy Warrior in my past. The pronunciation is almost exactly the way I currently say it. I suppose it's possible some Islamic soldier got together with an Italian woman in southern Italy and created the family I came from. It's also possible the name was Italianized over the centuries into the current spelling. There is no way to prove or disprove this theory and I will probably never know the true origins, but I've had fun telling this story to people.
