Fiorentino

This interesting and long-established surname is of early medieval Italian origin, and is a locational name for someone who came from Firenze (Florence) in Italy, originally named in Latin as "Florentia", and translating as "the City of Flowers". Locational surnames, such as this, were originally given to local landowners, and especially as a means of identification to those who left their birthplace to settle elsewhere. The adjectival forms of this surname, Fiorentino and Fiorentini, predominate over the noun form "Firenze", which is an unusual occurrence in Italian geographical names, the noun form, with or without the preposition "da, de, di" (of), generally being much older and more widely found. The surname is recorded in Italian Church Registers under the variant spellings: Fiorentini, Fioretto, Fiorotto and Fiorentino. On November 7th 1575, Francischella Fiorentino, daughter of Francisco and Minichella Fiorentino, was christened at Lipari, Messina, Italy, and on August 24th 1614, the marriage of Giuseppa Fiorentino to Carlo Della Valle took place at Santa Maria Capua Vetere, Caserta, Italy. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Lattanzio Pier Maria Fiorentini, which was dated August 15th 1547, in "Birth Registers of Lucignano", Arezzo, Italy, during the reign of Charles V, Habsburg Emperor, 1519 - 1558. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.