Originally published on http://www.conigliofamily.com/Foundlings.htm
In my genealogic research of Sicilian and Italian records, I have been able to trace many families back through several generations, into the early 1800s and even earlier.  I have almost invariably found that there was at least one ‘brick wall’ in each of these families, where the line started with a child for whom both parents were listed on the civil registration of birth in Italian as ‘genitori ignoti’.   On earlier baptismal records,  the parents of these children were listed in Latin as ‘genitoribus incogniti’.  The Italian and Latin terms mean the same thing: ‘parents unknown’.
THE CAUSES:  Infant abandonment was widespread, for a variety of reasons.  For one, unwed pregnancy was a social disgrace, not only for the unwed mother but for her entire family.  Another obvious reason for abandonment was the extreme poverty of most citizens of the ‘Mezzogiorno’, as the southern Apennine peninsula and insular Sicily are known.  And in some regions, large complements of men, often far from home at sulfur, salt, or potash mines brought high prostitution rates and subsequent illegitimate births.
      At least outwardly, church authorities were zealous in protecting the identities of unwed mothers, and saving ‘face’ for them and their families.   A more important motive was that the church considered newborns as ‘Turchi’ (Turks) or heathens, who could not be saved unless they were baptized.  Sadly, its concern for these children after baptism often was not as great, once their souls were saved.

      In addition to the church, civil officials were also concerned with these cases because often the cost of the care of such infants fell to the civil authorities.  The situation devolved to the point that many towns, both on mainland Italy and the island of Sicily, installed a device called ‘la ruota (or rota) dei proietti’: the wheel of the castoffs, or ‘the foundling wheel’.  These wheels could be in the outside walls of churches or convents, or in larger cities, in the walls of foundling hospitals or orphanages.
THE WHEEL:  The wheel was a kind of ‘lazy Susan’ that had a small platform on which a baby could be placed, then rotated into the building, without anyone on the inside seeing the person abandoning the child.  That person then pulled a cord on the outside of the building, causing an internal bell or chimes to ring, alerting those inside that an infant had been deposited.  In the larger towns, foundlings were baptized, then kept in a foundling home with others, and fed by wet-nurses in the employ of the home.  There they may have stayed for several years until they were taken by townspeople as menial servants or laborers, or placed with a foster family.  Or, sadly but more likely, they never left the institution, having died from malnutrition or from diseases passed on by the wet-nurses.
      In smaller towns, the foundling wheel may have been in the wall of the residence of a local midwife.  She would have received the child, possibly suckled it immediately to keep it alive, or arranged for a wet-nurse to do so, then taken it to the church to be baptized and to the town hall to be registered.   She then consigned a wet-nurse living in or near the town to take the child and provide sustenance, for a monthly stipend paid by the town.  If the child was near death when found, many midwives were authorized by the church to baptize the infant, ‘so that its soul would not be lost’.  Civil officials were often similarly authorized.
      Sometimes children were literally abandoned on the street or on a doorstep, but the use of the foundling wheel was so widespread that even these children were referred to as having been ‘found in the wheel’.
The Real Casa Santa Annunziata [Royal Holy Annunciation Home] of Naples was an ancient institution devoted to the reception of abandoned babies. It was created in the fourteenth century along with the “ruota [wheel]”, a kind of wooden cylindrical drum where the children were placed, then gathered inside by nurses ready to intervene at every call. The “wheel” was closed June 22, 1875, but infants were admitted to the orphanage until 1980. 
Residents of the institution were called “sons of the Virgin,” “Children of Nunziata” or “espositi[exposed ones]”, that is, exposed to the protection of Our Lady. Hence the surname Esposito, of which we have the first written evidence in the archives of the Royal House of Naples [in what was then the Kingdom of Sicily] with a “Fabritio Esposito, age two years, cast off” at the Annunziata on 1 January 1623 at three-thirty AM. 
This surname was used for all the “abandoned” until 1814 when Joachim Murat, the French general, brother of Napoleon Bonaparte and finally the King of mainland Sicily, eliminated the practice. The surname Esposito is still the most widespread in the region of Campania.
The surname Esposito, regarded as a stigma, could no longer be used: it was the duty of the civil authorities, therefore, who recorded the arrival of the children, having to invent a surname every day. 
The orphanage staff let themselves be inspired by everyday life: if the sun was shining, the orphans of that day would be called Splendente [Shining]; if someone knocked on the door at the time of the first abandonment of the day, the last name would be Tocco “Tapping”, and so on. 
The eminent sculptor and designer Vincenzo Gemito was placed in the wheel on 17 July, 1852 (the day after his birth), and was given the surname Genito (“that which is generated, a son”), which later, due to an error in transcription, became Gemito.
http://www.cognomix.it/paraphrased the above from an October 2013 article in il Mattino which says: “That name, ‘Esposito’, which tells the child’s origin, was considered a stigma, which made life impossible for people who grew up at the Annunziata.” 

Il Mattino adds: “The foundling wheel was created to accommodate only babies, but desperate mothers also left older children, sprinkling them with oil to allow them to fit into the mechanism. Too often, that passage caused fractures and internal injuries; so to prevent abandonment of older children, the space to lay the children was reduced from a hand’s-width to three quarters of a hand’s-width.”

THE RECORDS:  Throughout Europe, church records, dating in some towns from 1540, were kept of all baptisms, even those of foundlings.  Generally, church records didn’t even give any surname for a foundlings, just a ‘given name’ and the notation ‘parentibus ignoti’ as in ‘Phillipus parentibus ignoti’ (Filippo, unknown parents).  Such children went through life with only a first name and the handle ‘foundling’.   Often they simply adopted a nickname or descriptive surname to distinguish themselves from other ‘Filippo’s’.  
       From about 1809 – 1820, influenced by Napoleon’s ‘civil code’, civil birth records were instituted in northern Apennine duchies and principalities like Venice and Genoa and in the Kingdom of Sicily stretching from Abruzzo and Napoli on the mainland to Messina and Palermo on insular Sicily. From that time, not only were foundlings’ baptisms recorded at churches, but each child was civilly registered by the town’s ‘Uffiziale dello Stato Civile’, the Official of Civil Status, in the civil ‘Atti di Nascita’, or Records of Birth.  For ordinary births, such records gave the date; names and occupations of the parents; and the name of the child.  In the usual case, there was no other description of the child, besides its gender.
       Civil birth records for foundlings were different.  The ‘dichiarante’, or declarant (the person presenting the child, in ordinary cases its father) was identified by a title, which varied by town.  In many, as in Serradifalco, on the island of Sicily, the title was ‘ricevitrice dei proietti’, ‘receiver of castoffs’.  In other towns, like Sora on the mainland, it was ‘custode della ruota dei proietti’, or ‘keeper of the wheel of the castoffs’.  But the most poignant, to me, was the simple term used in the Sicilian village of Racalmuto, namely ‘ruotaia’: ‘wheel-lady’, or ‘lady of the wheel’.  In other towns variations such as ‘rotaia’ or ‘rotara’ were used, with the same meaning.
       Rather than simply giving the child’s gender, the civil registration document of a foundling usually stated where it was found: ‘nella ruota pubblica in questa comune’ ~ ‘in the public wheel of this town’; or if appropriate, on whatever street or doorstep it was found.  If the child had evident birthmarks (or none), that fact was noted, along with a description of the clothing or any ‘tokens’ found on the baby.  Some records stated that the midwife had arranged to initially feed the child and that it had then been consigned, according to law, to a ‘nutrice’, a wet-nurse; sometimes the name of the wet-nurse was given.  
       From the early 1800s until 1865, civil records were kept on pre-printed forms in a format originally specified by the Napoleonic Code. The extra information recorded for foundlings did not fit in the blanks, so often the written information did not fit the preprinted category.  The civil Register of Births frequently had a ‘Parte Seconda’ (Part 2) and the foundlings were registered in a section that was filed after the main portion (Part 1) of the register.  These Part 2 foundling records were completely handwritten.  In some towns, including Palermo and Catania, there was a complete separate register for foundling births.  The earliest civil records followed the church’s policy of simply giving foundlings first names, with the suffix ‘foundling’, later, they would give a concocted surname followed by ‘foundling’, as ‘Filippo Faccilorda, esposto’.  Civil records after 1865 gave only a made-up first name and surname, but the body of the record itself clearly indicated that the child was a foundling.
      In some locales and eras, the abandonment of children by their unwed mothers was essentially imposed by civil and church authorities.  Town priests and midwifes closely scrutinized young single women, and if they discovered a pregnancy, the expectant mother was ‘encouraged’ to give the child up, to avoid familial disgrace, and, more importantly to the church, to assure that the infant was baptized before it died.  Though the use of the wheel was nominally secret, many institutions required alms or payment by the mothers, so there was a ‘paper trail’ of evidence even though the general public was supposedly unaware of the particulars.  If a mother was unable to pay alms, often she was required to work for free in the institution as a wet-nurse.  
      Such activities could not long be kept secret from the community, and although the names of foundlings’ parents were not officially recorded, no doubt in small communities the true relationships were known.  In some cases, a mother would volunteer to take her own child to her home to wet-nurse, though ‘officially’ the infant’s parents were unknown.
     Unless an abandoned child’s parentage was officially established at some later date, most commonly by a rectification (specifically, a “legittimazione” or “legitimization) that was filed to give the names of one or both parents, or on the post-birth marriage record of its parents, the child was always officially referred to by its imposed name and as the child of unknown parents.  When such a child married, even though he and everyone in the community might have known who his parents were, if no official correction had been made, his marriage record would list his parents as ‘genitori ignoti’.
     Like those of all citizens, foundlings’ birth, marriage, or death records, or rectifications, are kept permanently in the Anagrafe or Registry Office of each town, with a copy in provincial or tribunal archives.  These records may be searched in person, or in many cases viewed on microfilm produced by the Mormon church, or on-line at genealogy sites.  Records of the disposition of abandoned children to wet-nurses or to foster homes may exist, but they are less easily uncovered and usually require on-site research at the towns, churches, or provinces involved.
    These original birth records often reflect the large proportion of foundling births in a town.  In Racalmuto, for example, in the year 1880, there were five hundred and twenty four legitimate births recorded, and eighty-three infants left in the wheel, a staggering fourteen percent of all births!   Other years, and other towns, show similar statistics.
NAMES:  Although their parents were at least ‘officially’ unknown, foundlings had to be given some kind of name, and this was done by the receiver of foundlings, or the priest baptizing the child, or the civil official registering the event.  On an ordinary birth or baptism record, usually only the given (‘first’) name of the baby was recorded, since its surname was the same as its father’s.  But with foundlings, the given and the surname were recorded.  Both, of course, were ‘made-up’, and in the earliest records, first names were recorded, followed by a word that was synonymous with ‘foundling’, as in Pietro proietto.  
‘Proietto’ meant ‘castoff’ or ‘thrown away’ in early Italian, and consideration of the word’s Latin origin sheds some light on the way foundlings were looked upon.  The origin of ‘proietto’ was the Latin ‘projectus’, and early church baptisms used ‘Projectus’ as a surname for foundlings.  One meaning of ‘projectus’ was ‘cast’ or ‘thrown’.  But Latin dictionaries give secondary meanings: ‘lowlife’; ‘miserable’; ‘deplorable’; ‘honorless’; ‘lamentable’; and many more similar meanings.Such was the view they had of these parentless infants.
 Other surnames clearly meaning ‘foundling’ include Trovato (found), Abbandonata(abandoned), or Esposto/Esposito (exposed).   In the  various duchies, principalities and other states on the mainland, at baptism, frequently a foundling was given a saint’s name or other made-up name as a first name, then a surname that was the Latin possessive form of the same name, for example GenesiusGenesi (Genesius, son of Genesius) or AmatusAmati(Amatus, son of Amatus).  Such ‘first’ or given names were then Italianized in the civil records, resulting in Genesio for Genesius; Amato for Amatus, etc.
       The descriptive ‘foundling surname’ eventually became the person’s official name.  When a foundling boy grew up, was married and had children, the children’s surnames would be the same as their father’s even though they themselves were not foundlings.  Many of these surnames exist to this day, with their bearers having no idea that somewhere in their ancestry there was a foundling child.
      Even the given names of foundlings were often unusual or fantastic, like Cleopatra or Romulo.  When surnames other than Proietto, etc. began to be used, they, too were unusual and often stigmatic, like Urbino (blind); lo Guasto (crippled); Milingiana (eggplant); and Vinagro (bitter wine).  A child with such a name was marked throughout his or her life as one with ‘genitori ignoti’ (unknown parents) and by inference, as a love child, although at least in theory, it wasn’t known whether or not the child was abandoned by a married woman who conceived it in wedlock.  Even children with less insulting surnames were thusly scorned.  Di Dio (of god); D’Angelo (of an angel); del Popolo (of the people); degli Uomini (of the men); di Giugno (born in June) and Gelsomino (jasmine) are all mild enough surnames, but in certain towns they were used exclusively for foundlings, and marked them just as surely as the cruder versions.Eventually, laws were passed prohibiting the stigmatic names, but in small towns, because the names were made up, they were invariably different than the surnames usually occurring there.  Coniglio is a perfectly valid Italian/Sicilian surname, but in a town of only 1,500 souls, where no one else had the surname Coniglio, any child with that name was obviously a foundling.   In some cases, a foundling was simply given the name of his village as a surname: thus, Giuseppe Vallelunga, Rosa Siragusa, etc.    However, it was more common to give foundlings the name of some other town, or a modification of a town name to indicate ‘from the town’, such as Barese, Palermitano, Tirminisi, etc.  This also marked the child as a ‘stranger’ or the child of a stranger.  Place names as surnames, I believe, were more common as foundling names than they were as places of origin. For a more detailed analysis of Sicilian town place-names as surnames, click HERE.
Typical Foundling Surnames and Towns in Which They Were Prevalent

SURNAMEMEANINGTOWN
AbbandonataabandonedSora (Frosinone)
Asinellolittle assMussomeli (Caltanissetta)
CagnazzibitchesSanteramo (Bari)
di Dio[child] of GodCastrogiovanni (now Enna, Enna)
San Piero Patti (Messina)
Valguarnera Caropepe (Enna)
Esposto,
EspositoexposedSerradifalco (Caltanissetta)
numerous others
Gelsominojasmine flowerMontemaggiore Belsito (Palermo)
Mussomeli
GiumentomareSan Cataldo (Caltanissetta)
Serradifalco
MilingianaeggplantSerradifalco
Miller[yes, Miller]Serradifalco
del Popolo[child] of the peopleCastiglione (Catania)
Montalbano di Elicona (Messina)
Linguaglossa (Catania)
Pampinellaleaflet, sprigAltavilla (Palermo)
Baucina (Palermo)
Santa Flavia (Palermo)
PortoghesePortugueseTrapani (Trapani)
ProiettocastoffRacalmuto (Agrigento)
SpaventofrightMussomeli
SpuriospuriousMussomeli
Trovatellolittle foundlingSant’Angelo Brolo (Messina)
TrovatofoundlingAcireale (Messina)
Alcamo (Trapani)
Valguarnera (Enna)
numerous others
TulipanotulipMussomeli
   Local customs for recording foundling births varied.   In some towns, the child was given only a first name and recorded as ‘Francesco Esposto’ or ‘Francesco Proietto’, while in others, they might be listed as ‘Francesco Gallino Proietto’.  In either case, in the annual indices following each year’s records, alphabetically listing births, the names were listed under ‘E’ for ‘Esposto’ or ‘P’ for ‘Proietto’.   Once the use of explicit foundling names like Esposto were forbidden, the infants were usually listed by their concocted surnames.  Regardless when searching the birth indices for the names of children suspected to be foundlings, it’s wise to check for different variations.  
THE FATE OF FOUNDLINGS:  Civil records were and are open to the public, in ‘registri’ or registers. Citizens could go to the town hall and ask to see them.  ‘Unknown’ parents of a foundling could therefore see what name had been given to their child (from the date and the description of tokens or clothing), and sometimes, to whom the baby had been consigned.  They might then reclaim the child, although recorded instances of this are few.  If a legally married couple reclaimed a child, they would then go to the civil authorities for registration of a ‘legittimazione’, a correction which would officially name them as parents, and legitimize the child’s birth.  Tales are also told of many a mother who claimed her child without revealing their relationship, being paid a stipend to wet-nurse her own child.       In the foundling homes, hospitals or asylums of large cities, many babies suffered horrific conditions.  Wet-nurses were often of lower classes and carried diseases passed on to the babies.  Children who survived to early childhood could be ‘farmed out’ as servants, field laborers, or worse.  This didn’t preclude the consignment of foundlings to foster-families that cared for them responsibly and raised them to adulthood.  Because of the nature of these arrangements, easily available public records are hard to come by.  At one point in Italy’s history, foundling homes became so crowded, and the total pay required for the wet-nurses of its inmates so high, that civil authorities hired ‘external wet-nurses’ to care for some infants away from the institutions.  They even sometimes acknowledged unwed mothers and paid them a sort of child support stipend, to nurse their own children.
This led to some bizarre situations.  In the years following the unification of Sicily with northern Apennine states (the ‘resorgimento’), vast church property was appropriated by the state, and church and state were at odds.  Marriages that took place solely in church were not recognized by the civil authorities, and in order for a union (and its offspring) to be legal, a couple was required to be married in a civil ceremony, usually at the town hall by a public official.  When the policy of civil stipends to unwed mothers was instituted, sometimes an expectant mother would marry in church, avoiding family disgrace, but would not take the civil vows.  This made her child illegitimate in the eyes of the state, entitling her to a stipend!
In small towns, the fate of foundlings may have been somewhat better than in large cities.  In smaller communities, they may not have been subjected to the crowding of orphanages, but instead were consigned to the individual families of the wet-nurses.  There, though they may have eventually been required to work in the fields or the family business, the same as the family’s natural children, they may also have found some measure of acceptance and normality.
LEGENDS:  A very common explanation many families were given about a foundling ancestor is a variation on the following theme: A young girl was working as a servant in the home of the local prince (or rich businessman, or priest).  She was impregnated by the man (or his son, etc.), who could or would not marry her, and she left the baby, of noble or upper-class blood, in the wheel.
      Some of those stories may carry a grain of truth; however, there is usually no way to corroborate them, and I believe the great majority were fiction, made up to assuage the shame of families with unwed daughters who had become pregnant.  Hopefully, today the world is less judgmental.
EXAMPLES:  There follow some links to images of original records dealing with foundlings from several Sicilian and Italian towns, in various years.  They’re presented here to show different approaches to the records, to shed some light on the lives of these children, and finally, to celebrate their existence.
The above material is a synopsis of information from my own research of Sicilian and Italian birth, marriage and death records, augmented by correspondence with genealogist Ann Tatangelo (angelresearch.wordpress.com), and by the description of foundling management in the book Sacrificed for Honor, by David I. Kertzer

From https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Italian_Infant_Abandonment
Italian Infant AbandonmentUnderstanding the history of the Italian infant abandonment system and its name-assignment practices may help you understand how some of your ancestors acquired their surnames and possibly help you find and identify ancestors in the records.
Also see Foundlings Article for more info at http://www.conigliofamily.com/Foundlings.htm

History
​From about the thirteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century, throughout the areas that in 1860 became unified Italy, a pregnant single woman, faced with the loss of her own and her family’s honor, would leave her residence to give birth elsewhere and after having the baby baptized, would give (or have the midwife give) the newborn baby to a foundling home (ospizio) to be cared for by others. For about a year after giving birth, the unwed mother, in order to pay for her own infant’s care, often served in the ospizio as a wet nurse for the children of others though almost never for her own child. (Kertzer, pp. 131-33, 162-63.) With few exceptions, she would have no contact with her child ever again.
Other new mothers anonymously abandoned their infants at the “wheel” (la ruota) located in the outside wall of the ospizio, sometimes leaving a sign of recognition (segno di riconoscimento), such as the image of a saint, a foreign coin, a torn piece of cloth, or other talisman, to preserve the mother’s ability, rarely exercised, of returning to reclaim the child, sometimes a year later or even many years later.
Meanwhile, the foundling homes attempted to place the babies with lactating women in foster families, typically in the countryside, though some of the children remained in an ospizio for up to five or ten years or even longer and in some cases for their entire lives. (Kertzer, pp. 85-6, 116.) Naples was an exception; due to lack of funding to pay external wet nurses, the foundling home there attempted to care for the bulk of its abandoned babies within the foundling home itself, without placement with outside wet nurses. (Kertzer & White, 1994, p. 454.) Large percentages of the abandoned infants did not survive infancy. Those who did survive entered a new life in a new place with a new family.
This system — which began in the areas that later became Italy and which spread to France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Poland, and most of the Austrian provinces (Kertzer, p. 10) — was finally abandoned in Italy and elsewhere by about the beginning of the twentieth century. Some aspects of the system have re-emerged today in the “safe-haven laws” enacted recently in all 50 states and the District of Columbia within the United States (Guttmacher, p. 1) and in such other countries as Germany, Hungary, the Philippines, Slovakia, South Africa, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Latvia, India, Italy, and Pakistan, all of which strictly govern but to varying degrees permit some form of abandonment of newborns, all with the aim to help stem infanticide and make abortion rare. (Mueller & Scherr, p. 2.)
As conducted in Italy for about seven centuries, with varying degrees of success, the infant abandonment system was prompted by “great concern for the lives of women who found themselves in the desperate position of being pregnant and unmarried, with no one to care for their child.” (Kertzer, p. 37.)
Name-Assignment PracticesThe Italian infant-abandonment system generally but not always included the assignment of a surname to the infant upon arrival at the ospizio. Thus while in the ospizio and later when placed with a family in the countryside, the child bore a surname different from its unknown family of origin and different from the family with which it was placed. (Kertzer, pp. 119-22.) “Until the nineteenth century, foundlings in many areas were baptized with first names only and were not given a last name.” (Kertzer, p. 119.)
But generally, upon arrival at the ospizio shortly after baptism, a new surname was assigned. And once the infant or child was placed with a wet nurse in the countryside, it would be assigned a surname used locally for foundlings (such as Della Casa or Casagrande or Esposito, as shown by a few examples in the table below). For the most part the new surname was used by the child throughout the remainder of its life, though often at the time of marriage or with the births of children to that marriage, the once-abandoned child, even a male child, might assume the surname of a spouse, passing that surname on to the children of the couple.
Samples of Surnames Assigned to Abandoned Infants
 Latin or ItalianMeaning in English
 Della Casagrande“Of the Ospizio” (of the Hospital or Hospice) 
De Domo Magna “Of the Ospizio” (of the Hospital or Hospice)
Innocenti                                       “Innocent One”
Della ScalaName assigned by foundling home in Sienna
ProjettiName assigned by foundling home in Rome
Esposito “Abandoned”
Degli Esposti “Abandoned”
Ospizio Foundling Home
Incogniti “Unknown”
Circoncisi “Circumcised”
PalmaSurname given to child born or abandoned on Palm SundayThus, for example, if an abandoned child named Giuseppe were to have come from the ospizio to a local wet nurse to be taken in by a local family, the child might be raised with the “Casagrande” surname and, upon marriage to a woman maiden surnamed “Risso,” might thereafter in the records of births of their children be referred to as “Giuseppe Risso Casagrande” or “Giuseppe Risso della Casa Grande” or “Giuseppe Risso di Casa,” or the like. Sometimes the surnames assigned in the ospizi were used by the child throughout its life, with no new assignment in the residence location of the adopting family.
Such names were usually unique. In the Florence ospizio, sometimes an elaborate form of the first name was used for the new surname, such as by pluralizing the first name (Amato Amati, Barbera Barberi) or by abbreviating the first name (Serafino Serafi, Anselmo Selmi). In Milan, from 1475 to 1825, every foundling was given the surname Colombo (“pigeon”), still the second most common surname in Milan and the fifth most common surname in all of Italy. Because of the stigma often formerly attached to children of illegitimate birth, and the manner in which that stigma often was perpetuated by the assignment of surnames that signaled the child’s early history of abandonment, efforts sometimes were made to assign surnames that hid that history.
For example, in 1862 in Bologna, wet nurses were ordered to register the births of foundlings and provide them with both first and last names, but it was suggested that surnames be derived from words descriptive of things within one of the three kingdoms of nature (minerals, vegetables, and animals), such as Gessi (gypsum), Sassi (stones), Pietra (rock), Monti (mountains), Foblia (leaf), Rosa (rose), Garofonio (carnation), Colombi (pigeons), Leoni (lions). This practice spread through much of the northern part of Italy.
Parenthetically, the suname “Casagrande,” mentioned in a few examples above, means literally “large house” and is an apt description of the massive Ospedale di Pammatone in Genoa (1766-1942), a location where ever enlarging hospital structures were established between about 1422 and 1942 when the Pammatone was destroyed during the Second World War. It is where, for one example of thousands upon thousands, in about 1761 or 1762 a man named Francesco della Casa Grande was abandoned at the ruota of the ospedale and cared for as an abandoned infant before being placed in the municipality of Lumarzo, 27 km (17 mi.) to the east by north east of Genoa, where he would live until 1849 when he died there at 87 years of age. (Sign in and see his Lumarzo death certificate at https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1971-26956-14185-2.) Numerous images of the hospital, including paintings and photographs, both before and after its destruction, can easily be found by performing an image search on the Internet.
* Note that the following surnames, identified as ones given to abandoned infants, are discussed in Ettore Rossoni’s “L’Origine dei Cognomi Italiani: Storia ed Etimologia” [“The Origin of Italian Surnames: History and Etymology”] (Melegnano, 2014; 3,379 pages; available at https://archive.org/details/OrigineEStoriaDeiCognomiItaliani), and that source should be consulted for further details:
Abbandonati, Abbandonato, Abbisogni, Abbisogno, Alfeni, Allevato, Alunni, Alunno, Angiolilli, Angiolillo, Aprile•, Aprili•, Ardimenti, Ardimento, Ardimentoso, Attivissimo, Auxilia, Bellavia, Bellinvia, Boccafusca, Bompadre, Bompede, Bonafiglia, Bonasorte, Bonasorti, Boncordi, Boncordo, Boncore, Bonerba, Bonocore, Bonpadre, Bonpede, Buccafusca, Buccafuschi, Buccafusco, Buocore, Buompede, Buonafiglia, Buonasorte, Buoncuore, Buonerba, Buonocore, Buonpadre, Buonpede, Cancelli, Cancellini, Cancellino, Cancello, Canciello, D’Aprile•, Dal Pio Luogo, Dal Pio, De Munda, De Mondi, De Chiara, De Vivo, De Vivi, De Nichilo, De Mundo, Degli Innocenti, Degli Esposti, Degliesposti, Del Pio Luogo, Del Pio, Del Mondo, Del Deo, Del Signore, Del Popolo, Della Ventura, Delpopolo, Demundo, Deserti, Devivi, Devivo, Di Monda, Di Mundo, Didio, Dimonda, Dimondo, Dimundo, Espositi, Esposito, Esposti, Esposto, Febbraio•, Febbraro•, Giubilei, Giubileo, Iddiolosa, Iddiolosà, Incristi, Infante, Infanti, Infantini, Infantino, Iuorno, La Loggia, Lettera, Lo Bascio, Lobascio, Lodeserto, Loggia, Lombini, Lombino, Luggesi, Luggisi, Lunalbi, Malvestio, Malvestiti, Malvestito, Mellucci, Melluccio, Melucci, Meluccio, Mirsi, Misericordia, Monasteri, Monastero, Nichil, Nichilo, Nihil, Orfanelli, Orfanelli, Orfanini, Orfanini, Paradisi, Paradiso, Pensato, Pentecoste, Perchiacca, Portento, Posati, Posato, Poveri, Poverini, Poverino, Provvidenza, Puttin, Puttini, Radif, Ravveduto, Sacro Cuore, Sacro, Salesiani, Santececca, Settembre•, Trova, Trovatelli, Trovatello, Trovati, Trovato, Ulivini, Viavattene, Zambaglione, Zoccola, Zoccoli, Zoccolo.
• Because Mr. Rossoni identifies Aprile, Aprili, D’Aprile, Febbraio, Febbraro, and Settembre (April, February, and September) as surnames for abandoned infants derived from the names of the months in which the infants were abandoned, it may well be that the names of other months were similarly used.

On occasion, a person who was abandoned as a child might learn who one or both of his or her birth parents were, for example, when registering for the military or when marrying. Sometimes the records of the ospizio were coordinated with the birth or baptism record. The above two images show the birth and abandonment records of a baby boy named by the midwife and the priest as “Merico Scherzi”; the certificate of abandonment is interleaved in the volume of records of births facing the page on which the birth is recorded. In this case, in 1902, at a time when the system was virtually ended, the surname was given to the child at the time of baptism, without the mother or father being identified, with the birth occurring on 23 Apr 1902, the baptism occurring on 24 Apr 1902, and the abandonment occurring on 25 Apr 1902, in Chiavari, 12.6 km (13.4 miles) away from Orero.
Tracing An Abandoned Infant’s AncestryThis discussion is comprised of two parts: (1) What to do when an ancestor’s birth or baptism record is not found in the records of the town of post-birth residence; and (2) What to do when an ancestor’s birth or baptism record is found (which most often is not the town of post-birth residence).
1. What to do when an ancestor’s birth or baptism record is not found in the records of the town of post-birth residence
As you trace ancestral lines back into earlier times, you might locate records of vital events in an ancestor’s later life (records of his or her own confirmation, marriage, death and burial). Additionally, you might also locate records of vital events of other persons whose records mention your ancestor’s service as a sponsor (godparent) or his or her service as a witness to the other person’s birth, baptism, death or burial. Yet, as you attempt to locate your ancestor’s birth record, you do not find it. What do you do?
Normally, in such a circumstance you should do as you probably should always do in researching an ancestor, namely, try to find all records that pertain to him or her, especially the record of death. In many cases, the earliest record mentioning an ancestor newly arrived in a town may well mention the ancestor’s place of origin. However, in the case of an abandoned infant, this usually will not be the case. In most all cases of abandoned infants, if the placed child lived the remainder of his or her life in the town whose records you are researching, it may well be that only the ancestor’s death record will mention his place of birth. Hence, for abandoned infants who live to adulthood, the death record is of preeminent importance, for it often will be the only record to mention his place of birth and thus not only may mention that he or she was born of a “padre ignoto” (unknown father) and “madre ignota” (unknown mother) but also may mention the city or town of birth.
Of course, if he or she was born in a large city, that may well constitute the end of conventional page-by-page or volume-by-volume research in registers of births and baptisms concerning that abandoned infant. Learning from his or her death record that the birth occurred in a large city may eventually lead you only to analysis of indexes that may have been or have yet to be prepared for births and baptisms. But page-by-page research in all of the parishes of a large city may not yet be feasible (at least not until the records are indexed).
An example here may be instructive. In the hamlet of Tasso in the community of Lumarzo to the east by northeast of Genova in the northern Italian province of Liguria, there lived a man named Lorenzo Casagrande. His wife was named Anastasia Casagrande, a name she received after having been abandoned and then adopted. (Remember that Italian women often retained and used their maiden surnames throughout their lives, as they often still do today; “Casagrande” happened to be her surname even prior to their marriage — a Casagrande married a Casagrande.) Anastasia’s 1891 death record (Registro degli Atti di Morte, Comune di Lumarzo, Provincia di Genova, Anno 1891, Parte I, Atto No. 56) states that on 18 Nov 1891 “in Lumarzo . . . , è morta Casagrande Anastasia di anni cinquantasei, massaia, residente in Lumarzo, nata in Genova, da padre ignoto, domiciliato in ____, e da madre ignota, domiciliata in ____” (“in Lumarzo . . . Casagrande Anastasia died, of fifty-six years of age, housewife, resident of Lumarzo, born in Genoa, father unknown, domiciled in ____, and mother unknown, domiciled in ____”). Her birth and baptism record, of course, does not appear in the records of the community of Lumarzo (she was born in the City of Genoa, 27 km / 17 mi distant). Her record of birth and baptism, presumably recorded somewhere in Genoa in about 1834 or 1835, possibly but not necessarily will mention her given name as “Anastasia” and her surname as “Casagrande.” However, you may or may not be able easily to find her record of birth and baptism in Genoa. Were you to look for the record in a parish-by-parish search, you would look for a birth record that would not mention parents’ names, of course (though that alone should pose no obstacle and in fact may be quite helpful). But because Genova city has more than sixty parish churches, you might not be able to search the records conveniently, or at all, and you might simply have to await the possibility that someday potential future indexing of such records might yield a result for you.
However, other resources for your research may still be available to you (and they are mentioned in part 2 below).
2. What to do when an ancestor’s birth or baptism record is found (which most often is not found in the records of the town of post-birth residence)
When you do find the birth or baptism record of an ancestor who had been abandoned at birth (which most often is found not in the town of post-birth residence but elsewhere), you still are faced with the task, if you choose, of attempting to trace the abandoned child’s ancestry. Although the post-1865 records of births of abandoned children usually are recorded in Parte II of the birth register for the year in which the birth occurred (as is the record of birth of Merico Scherzi shown above), usually the birth record of an abandoned child did not mention the name of either parent. If, however, the parents later acknowledged the child, a record of the acknowledgement might possibly be found in the Atti Diversi (Miscellaneous Acts).
Similarly, both before and after unification (e.g., from the earliest to the latest times that records were kept in the town or city where you are conducting your research), you might still be able to learn the parentage of an abandoned child from other extant records. For example, when a young man would register for military service or exemption therefrom (at 21 years of age), the entry for him in the Lista di Leva (available at the Archivio di Stato for the province where the town of birth is located) might possibly reveal his parentage.
Similarly, other records should be consulted, such as notarial records (notarii), and tax assessment and census records (catasti or estimi catastali). As to the notarial records, be cautious not to interpret the title “bastardelli notarili” (illegitimate notary records) to refer to records pertaining to illegitimate children. Such records merely constitute a chronological list of the atti (acts) prepared by a notary as a sort of index or set of abstracts he kept of his own work for his own reference, considered and titled “illegitimate” only because they did not constitute legal documents themselves.
References

• David I. Kertzer and Michael J. White, “Cheating the Angel-Makers: Surviving Infant Abandonment in Nineteenth-Century Italy.” Continuity and Change, 9(03): 451-480. (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 10.1017/S0268416000002423).
• David I. Kertzer, Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).
• David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli. eds., Family Life in Early Modern Times, 1500-1789: The History of the European Family, Volume 1 (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2001).
• Guttmacher Institute, “State Policies in Brief—Infant Abandonment” (as of September 1, 2012).
• Joanne Mueller and Lorraine Sherr, “Abandoned babies and absent policies.” Health Policy (2009), doi:10.1016/j.healthpol.2009.06.002.
• Ettore Rossoni’s “L’Origine dei Cognomi Italiani: Storia ed Etimologia” [The Origin of Italian Surnames: History and Etymology”] (Melegnano, 2014; 3,379 pages; available at https://archive.org/details/OrigineEStoriaDeiCognomiItaliani)

External Links

• inchiostronline – Interior of a wheel (Webpage in Italian); or here for a rough English translation.
• http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Borgo_-_santo_Spirito_in_Sassia_-_la_ruota_1639.JPG (exterior of a wheel)
• See also https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6vx77k, a “Who Do You Think You Are?” episode about Tina Arena’s ancestry (which shows at 20:24 through 26:58 how Ms. Arena’s great-great-grandmother, Carmella, took in foundlings). (Produced by SBS Australia, Serendipity Productions, and Artemis International, © 2010, season 3, episode 3, [1])

Dell’aurora tu sorgi più bella written by Cosmo Magliozzi

​I went to visit my mother today to give her some information about the Ciano family tree. My mother’s mother (my maternal grandmother) is a Ciano. While I was there listening to her stories about the history of her family, she started to tell me about her father’s side as well. Her father was a Magliozzi. Specifially, she was helping me name her father’s siblings, and then game me the names of her great uncles (her Magliozzi grandfather’s brothers).
She then told me a story about this particular uncle named Cosmo Magliozzi.
Cosmo Magliozzi lived with his wife Rosina (maiden name unknown…it may have been Patalano). They had no children of their own.
However, as a young child, my mother would take walks with her family and they would come across the home of Cosmo and Rosina. Cosmo loved children and would entertain them and some them kindness. My mother so enjoyed the company of Cosmo when her family would walk past his home.
She was young and did not even know that Cosmo was her great uncle (brother to her grandfather).
Years later she would travel back to Italy and visit with her brother that would tell her stories of the family. Her brother was also named Cosmo Magliozzi (likely a named passed down the family line, and possibly naming him for his great uncle).
Her brother would tell her about their great uncle Cosmo, and continued to describe where he lived, his wife and their friendliness to the local children. That is when my mother learned that “old Cosmo” was actually her great uncle Cosmo Magliozzi. She was pleasantly surprised.
The surprise did not end there.
Her brother went on to tell her that their great uncle Cosmo Magliozzi was the writer/composer of the song: Dell’aurora tu sorgi più bella
My mother was shocked. This was one of her most beloved religious songs and to find out it was written not only by her great uncle, but to have it discovered it was a man she adored. Today she showed me a prayer book with the hymn written inside, among many other prayers and songs.
Sadly, as a religious hymn, my great great uncle Cosmo Magliozzi was not credited in the book. I decided to try to locate the origin of the song online, and I was unable to find any information. It was just something that was known in the family, and has been passed down through the generations.
Below are the lyrics of Dell’aurora tu sorgi più bella written by the late Cosmo Magliozzi as well as youtube video of various artists performing their interpretations of the song.
If anyone reading this can help me locate a credit to Cosmo, provide me a photo of Cosmo, or a photo of his grave so I can learn more about my artist composer relative, I would be very grateful.
Dell’aurora tu sorgi più bella
Dell’aurora tu sorgi piu bella
coi tuoi raggi a far lieta la terra
e fra gli astri che il cielo rinserra
non v’e stella come te.
Gli occhi tuoi son piu fondi del mare
la tua fronte ha il profumo del giglio
il tuo viso ricorda tuo figlio
suoi tuoi passi nascon fiori.
RIT. Bella tu sei qual sole
bianca piu della luna
e le stelle piu belle
non son belle come te.
Ti coronano tutte le stelle
al tuo canto rispondera il vento
della luna si curva l’argento
si rivolge verso te.
Quando tutto d’intorno rovina e la…

Stemma Di Chinappi

Information provided by Maurizio Chinappi of Rome Italy

Submitted Nov 18 2018 on a Facebook group
This is the Coat of Arms of the Chinappi issued by the Araldica Guelfi in Genova which is considered a very trustworthy Heraldry Research Archive.

The Chinappi’s originate from Lazio Region, hence Gaeta..
The crown indicates they were Nobles.
The Helm that they were Military and the Red Band that they took part in many Campaigns with bloodshed.
The 2 Wine Goblets represent their good wealth as wine was reserved to the high class Nobles.
At the time of issue I only asked for 3 generations back and that’s why it’s only indicated Maurizio (me) Giuseppe (my father) and Angelo (my grandfather)

If you have a different Coat of Arms for Chinappi, please comment below or submit your information to The Chinappi Family Tree

There was a Chinappi named Cosmo-Tommaso. He lived in Gaeta.
He was the son of Marciano Chinappi and Amilia Di Tucci.

Many of his friends called him “Paparome”. Loosely translated it refers to the “Pope In Rome.”
His nickname came about because of the legend that he descended from a family line, that was related to a Pope of the Catholic Church.
Which Pope? No one knows. It was a legend that people tended to believe.
One day, a stranger came into the village of Gaeta. Cosmo-Tommaso was speaking to him, and the stranger asked for someone to vouche for Cosmo-Tommaso so the stranger could know that Tommaso was trust-worthy.
One of Tommaso’s long time friends was near by and he volunteered to vouche for Cosmo-Tommaso.
The friend said, I have known Cosmo-Tommaso Paparome all of my life! We have been friends for almost 20 yrs!
At that moment, Cosmo-Tommaso said to his friend: “Paparome?! My name is CHINAPPI!”
The friend was shocked. “Chinappi? I always thought your name was Paparome!
NO! said Cosmo-Tommaso. It’s always been Chinappi, everyone just calls me that.

This is a story about my grandfather “Paparome”
It was passed down to my parents who shared it with me.
But it did get me thinking.
Growing up, I had heard the legend as well that there was a Chinappi that had become a Pope, or that there was a Pope related to a Chinappi in some way.
I decided to see what I could find online, and figuring that in Chinappi genealogy, all roads lead to Gaeta, I figured I would look for Popes that had roots in Gaeta.
I found one:
Pope Gelasius II

Papacy began 24 January 1118
Papacy ended 29 January 1119
Personal details
Birth name Giovanni Caetani
Born 1060–64 Gaeta, Principality of Capua
Died 29 January 1119 Cluny, Duchy of Burgundy, Kingdom of France

Acting Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church (1088)
Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin (1088–1118)
Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church (1089–1118)



Pope Gelasius II (c. 1060/1064 – 29 January 1119), born Giovanni Caetani or Giovanni da Gaeta (also called Coniulo), [1] was Pope from 24 January 1118 to his death in 1119. A monk of Monte Cassino and chancellor of Pope Paschal II, Caetani was unanimously elected to succeed him. In doing so he also succeeded to the conflicts with Emperor Henry V over investiture. Gelasius spent a good part of his brief papacy in exile.
He was born between 1060 and 1064 at Gaeta into the Pisan branch of the Caetani family, and became a monk of Monte Cassino. Pope Urban II, who wished to improve the style of papal documents, brought him to Rome and made Caetani a papal subdeacon (August 1088) and cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin (probably on 23 September 1088). As chancellor of the Holy Roman Church from 1089 to 1118, he drastically reformed the papal administration, establishing a permanent staff of clerks for the papacy, overcoming the previous custom of relying on Roman notaries to write papal documents, and introducing the minuscule curial script. His tenure also established the precedent of the papal chancellor always being a cardinal and holding the office for life or until elected pope.
Shortly after his unanimous election to succeed Pope Paschal II in 1118, he was seized by Cencio II Frangipane, a partisan of Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, but was freed by a general uprising of the Romans on his behalf.[2]
Henry V sought to enforce the privilege of investiture conceded (and later revoked in 1112) by the papacy, under duress, by Paschal II. He drove Gelasius II from Rome in March 1118, pronounced his election null and void, and set up Maurice Bourdin, Archbishop of Braga, as antipope under the name of Gregory VIII.

source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gelasius_II
Have you heard the Chinappi Pope stories as well?
Do you have a different Pope that it might be?
Ask your grandparents and share your story here.

At the moment, the longest living Chinappi we have on record is
Giuseppina Chinappi
who died at 103 years old and 6 months.
Giuseppenina Chinappi was born in Gaeta, Latina, Italy on
MARCH 19 1895

She is the daughter of
Marciano chinappi (abt. 1875 -1921)
and
Anna Di Tucci ( ? -abt.1898)
She married
Antonio Vaudo ( ? – abt. 1914)
had one child and was then widowed
She then married
Francesco Mitrano (1898-1995)
and had 5 more children
She died SEPT 29 1998 still in Gaeta.
She is in the family tree,
but we are missing photos of most of her children
and have not updated the descendents of her children.

If you are a descendent of Giuseppenina
contact us with updated and photos
for The Chinappi Family Tree
Do you know a Chinappi that lived longer
than 103 years and 6 months?
Contact us and let us know.

I have always been curious about the origins of the family name of Chinappi.
As a child I had heard that the word “China” appearing in Chinappi was an indication
of my ancestors possibly being sailors that travelled the trade root to China.
I looked up the Italian word for China and found it was “Cina”
The rumor is possible, but there is nothing confirmed.
A dna match told me that he was told stories of how when China started to travel to Italy in the 1400-1500, Chinese women were brought to Italy for Italian men, and the children of those couples were given newly created names that started with “chi”. But this is still not confirmed.
To read an update of the China – Chinappi Connection
Then there were the nicknames from elementary and high school from my “friends”
that lovingly included:
Chinapps, Chin-ups, Chips, Chippy, Ga-nap, Gee-nap, and Appi. (Oh joy!)
In college the nickname graduated to: Chank Frinappi (based on Frank Chinappi)
(Oh Double-Joy!)
Recently I decided to look up the meaning of Italian surnames,
to help me find the origins of the Chinappi surname.
Here is what I found:
Italians didn’t generally use surnames until the Italian population started to grow
and more families needed to be distinguished one from another.
So beginning in the 15th century, Italians in the upper classes started to add a surname.
By the time of the Council of Trent (1545–1563), using a surname was a common practice
and further solidified by that council when they emphasized the need
to record baptisms, marriages, and burials.
Italian surnames generally come in a few main categories as far as their origins are concerned.
Where did my Italian last name come from?
Patronymics (The surname comes from an ancestor’s first name)—d’Alberto, d’Angelo, d’Alessi
Geographical areas—Lombardo, Di Genova, Napolitano
Descriptives or Nicknames—Franco, Betto, Zello, Gambino
Occupations—Ferraro, Carpenteri, Muratori
Some names even come from animals, insects, birds, objects, anatomy, and so on.
Some surnames, such as Esposito, Innocenti, and Incogniti, can even be used to identify a family who had an abandoned child somewhere in their family.
source: familysearch.org/blog/en/my-italian-last-name/
The way your Italian surname is spelled can tell you a lot about where your family is from.
For example, surnames ending in -o come from southern Italy,
but names ending in -a or -i generally come from the north.
In fact, many Italian last names originated from nick names.
Rossi, which is the most common surname in Italy, means “redhead.”
Source: familyeducation.com/baby-names/browse-origin/surname/italian
Chinappi is a very rare surname, few people in Italy have the family name
and might be arised from Italy.
Few people around the world have Chinappi as their surname.
I could not find ANY meaning for Chinappi.
So I tried to break the name up into CHI and NAPPI
Here is what I discovered:
CHI:
chi
pronoun [ indefinite, invariable ]
(correlato)
those, those who
Chi andava, chi veniva.
Those who were going, those who were coming.
Chi la pensa in un modo, chi in un altro.
There are those who think one way and those who think different.
chi
pronoun
(quale persona)
who
Chi è?
Who is it?
A chi l’hai detto?
Who did you tell?
Hanno voluto sapere chi è stato.
They wanted to know who it was
source: dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/italian-english/chi
NAPPI:
The Italian Nappi surname has several possible derivations.
It may have come from the words “nappa gib,” meaning “large nose,”
or perhaps from the Calabrian term “nappa,” used to denote a “clay dish.”
In either case, the Nappi surname is thought to have evolved from a nickname.
In general, Nappi would have been a plural form of the word, while Nappa,
would have been more popular as a name in Southern Italy.
source: houseofnames.com/nappi-family-crest
****************************************
Next, our cousin Bernard Chinappi from France has sent me this information and he is open to hearing from others about this as well:
Bernard CHINAPPI
Adresse E-Mail : [email protected]
Bernard Chinappi writes:Hereafter, I have expressed some thoughts on the name of CHINAPPI.
I am not a linguist and I am expressing here possibilities that I would like other contributors to verify and comment on, or even to refute.
A) GREEK ORIGIN
As it concerns, for the beginning of the name, we find the association of the letters CH. In the old time, such a name beginning was typical for the Rome area.
This assembly replaces a Greek letter “X”, which is pronounced “ki” (we find this letter also in the present Russian alphabet).
It should not be forgotten that some people left the city of Troy (about 1000 BC) to arrive and found the city of Gaeta and further found the city of Roma.
Note that the expedition was led by Aeneas, who had with him Caïeta (hence the city of Gaeta) who was the nurse of his son Ascanius (or Iule). Wrong tongues will say that Caïeta was also the mistress of Aeneas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Greek_alphabet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greek_alphabets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_(letter)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid
B) PLURAL
It is likely that this name, in the past, did not end with the letter “I” and the neutral “O” seems possible to me. In Italian, as in other languages (Russian language, for example) the final “I” is a plural sign.
Thus we could say Mr Erasmo CHINAPPO of the CHINAPPI family.
C) MEANING of CHINAP
On the other hand, it remains to be seen what is the initial meaning CHINAPPO or CHINAPPI.
Often the names are nicknames that have endured. These nicknames can be linked to a physical characteristic like BIANCO (white hair) or an attitude like GARBERO (kindness) or a job like FABBRO (blacksmith) or a place like POGGIO (mound) or a first name like Di MARCO (from Marc), … etc …
If I compare CHINA to the Latin ECHINUS (pronounced ekinus), itself borrowed from the ancient Greek ἐχῖνος (pronounced ekhīnos), which gave in old French ECHINUS then ECHINE in current French (vertebral column of an animal) and SPINE in English (we speak here from spinal column).
In Marseilles, in slang, we say of an old hunched man: “il s’est cassé l’échine au travail” and this gives in Italian “si è rotto la schiena al lavoro”.
In French slang we say rather “il s’est cassé le cul au travail” and in English “he broke his back at work”.
To conclude, I will therefore say that CHINAP comes from the Greek ἐχῖνος (pronounced ekhīnos) and related to a bowed attitude.
PS: nothing to do with China.




So basically some of the possible meanings of Chinappi are:
Chinappi: Who that has a large nose (nickname based on physical feature)
Chinappi: Who that makes Clay Dish (based on a profession of a potter)
Chinappi: Who that has a broken or bent back
Do you have any ideas or stories from older relatives about the origins
of the surname Chinappi?
Ask your grandparents, and share them with us!

Not all parts of the cemetery are accessible to the public. Some areas are now off limits because it is not structurally safe for visitors. This means that many of those older graves may not be accessible. You can walk around the grounds and some of the chapel and mausoleums as long as they are open. If they are barred from public visitors, you will not have access.

Author’s Note: I will continually be adding and editing this page, as I continue my research and collection new information. One day, I might even find the answer.
When I started doing genealogy, I often wondered who was the FIRST Chinappi.
The surname Chinappi, is not common. It is in fact a very unique surname that anyone with the surname Chinappi is most certainly related. It is not a question of IF they are related…it is a question of how closely or how distantly.
Was the Chinappi name a made up name, given to a foundling (a children that was abandoned and given up to an orphanage)?
Was the first person to use Chinappi trying to make a fresh start in life with a new identity, and changed his name to distance himself from his past? If so, for what reasons did he do it?
Was the Chinappi surname originally spelled and pronounced differently, and somehow evolved from what it was to Chinappi? If so, what was the name originally and why did it evolve?
In theory, if the Chinappi surname was created sometime in the last 5 centuries, then the Chinappi family tree is finite and eventually, it will be able to document all the Chinappi’s around the world.
The largest group of Chinappi all have roots leading back to Gaeta. I wondered just how far back the name would go. Recently I made a discovery.
I found a census online that was taken in Gaeta around 1747. In it was some information.
First, the name Chinappi was not present in this census. The closest name that was listed was CHINAPPO. I studied the census more and discover that because some members of the same family spell their names differently (for example, some might write Vasti and some might write Vasto, but they could all be part of the same blood family), that the misspellings should not be taken as meaning a different family and often names ending in “I” will all be taken in the census as ending in “O”.
So, that answers that issue.
Next, I spend quite some time, going through the rather long index of names which were only the Heads-Of-Household names.
I went looking to see how many Chinappi households there were in Gaeta in 1747.
Out of nearly 2000 households I ONLY FOUND FOUR
Yes, just four.
There were only two heads of households with the last name of Chinappi (spelled Chinappo) and one Chinappi dependent of a third household. and fourth household of a group of Chinappi step-children (where the widow of a Chinappi had re-married).
There were:

Just two Chinappi heads-of-households Each one was married and each one had 3 children. Of each group of 3 children, 2 were girls and 1 was a boy. In fact one of the boys (Francesco Chinappo was already in my tree, and based on the info I already had, I was able to deduce that the census took place around 1747)
One Chinappi wife with 4 children not carrying the Chinappi surname,
One widow who had 4 Chinappi children (3 boys and one girl) that later remarried. It seems that the 4 Chinappi step-children did not take on the new husband’s last name.
Now this is where it gets interesting.
If the Chinappi name did get started in Gaeta, and if there were only these 4 households of Chinappi in Gaeta in 1747, we can likely predict how far back the name goes.
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Maria Chinappi (the Chinappi wife) was 60 at the time of the 1747 census means she was born in 1687.
Bernado Chinappi was 53 at the time of the 1747 census which means he was born in 1694.
Carlo Chinappi (a name referred to as the husband of the widow Anna Rosa d’Oviddio) is assumed to be about the same age as her, which I will assume means he was born around 1703
Gioacchino Chinappi was 35 at the time of the 1747 census which means he was born in 1712.
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Lets consider that perhaps the 4 of them were siblings (and yes, back in the 1600-1700s it was possible to have siblings 25 years apart. (This is possible with the same wife if the first child was born around the time the mother was 16 and the last child born around the time she is 41). Young marriage and large families as such were the norm.
Another possibility could be that their father may had had two wives. If his first wife died young, and he re-married and had more children, that could also explain how these siblings (now possibly half-siblings are so distant in age and the large age gaps in between them.
The census does mention Bernardo Chinappi having to make payments of some kind “with his Chinappi brothers”. So this supports the idea they were siblings or half-siblings. Quote: “Bernardo e fratelli Chinappo pagano annui docati quattro e Carlini sette, per Canone di vigna e Possessione a Santo vito”
If they were siblings, then we can calculate that their father was likely born around 1660. If there were no Chinappi before him, then their father could have been the FIRST Chinappi.
If Maria, Bernardo, Carlo and Gioacchino were 1st cousins of some kind, then their grandfather would have been born sometime around 1625-50 and he could have been the FIRST Chinappi.
Something else that comes up in the census. It mentions that in March of 1745, Bernardo Chinappi was responsible, in addtion to a widow Dorodea Capomaccio, for the administion of some kind of payment for an estate. Usually the oldest son and his mother (now a widow) would take on such a responsiblity. This would mean that Dorodea Capomaccio was the mother of the Chinappi siblings AND the estate of the deceased is referred at different times to an Erasmo (or Erasm’Antonio Chinappi). One of the children of Carlo Chinappi was named Erasm’Antonio. It is possible that the child of Carlo was named after Carlo’s father. This is an Italian naming tradition).
This would make Erasm’Antonio Chinappi the first Chinappi. He likely died around 1745 as per the note in the census, and he was likely born between 1625-1650.
If Maria Chinappi (born around 1687) was the daughter of Erasm’Antonio and his first wife, that could potentially make Erasmo the first Chinappi. If Maria and Erasm’Antonio were siblings, that would make their father (as yet unknown name), the possible First Chinappi.
Eventually, I will have to find the census of Gaeta that covers the 1600s. Also, it is possible that the Chinappi surname did not start in Gaeta. If these Chinappi moved to Gaeta and were the first Chinappi to settle in Gaeta, it is possible that another village in Italy is the origin of the Chinappi surname. The other two villages in Italy that have a Chinappi population and that are close to Gaeta would be the cities of Formia and Sperlonga. It is possible that one of those cities had the first Chinappis and that this Chinappi family listed above moved to Gaeta and started the Chinappi lines that still exist in Gaeta today.
ADDENDUM:
Since writing this article, I have found more records.
Iacono Chinappi (spelled Chinappe) was born 28 Feb 1623 in Borgo di Gaeta
Raimo Chinappi (born around 1600)
Silvestre Francesco Silvestro Chinappi (spelled Chinappe) was born 13 Jan 1630
Silvestre’s father is listed as Marco Chinappi (Chinappe) with no dates of birth or death
and a record listing a woman named Olympia Chinappi  who was a godmother to someone. This record existed sometime after 1575 but before 1600
Maria Antonia Chinappo (Chinappi) was born 3 Jul 1586. Her father is listed as Gelardino Belardino Chinappo with no birth or death date. If he was 30 when Maria was born that would mean he was born around 1550.
 

Further to the above newly discovered records, there is a rumor that all Italian names that start with CHI may have indicated an Italian man having children with a Chinese mother. This is just rumor and stories passed down through the generations.  We do have tiny traces of Chinese DNA, so it could be possible. 
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More research is needed.