Italian and Sicilian Genealogy Glossary
Understanding Italian, Latin and archival terminology
Historical records often use words that have no exact modern English equivalent. Meanings may also vary by period, jurisdiction and document type. The explanations below are intended to help readers recognize a term and understand why it matters. They are not substitutes for reading the complete record in context.
Civil registration and official documents
Allegati matrimoniali — Supporting papers assembled for a marriage; the contents and survival vary.
Annotazione — Marginal or subsequent note added to an act, potentially recording a later event or correction.
Archivio di Stato — State Archive preserving governmental and other historical holdings within its remit. Archivio comunale — Municipal archive.
Atto di matrimonio — Civil marriage act recording a marriage and information about the spouses.
Atto di morte — Civil death act; may include age, residence, spouse or parents, depending on the period.
Atto di nascita — Birth act recorded in the civil register; usually more detailed than a modern birth certificate.
Certificato — Certificate containing selected information officially issued from a record.
Comune — Municipality; commonly the public authority responsible for civil-status records and official extracts.
Copia integrale — Complete copy or reproduction of a civil-status act, subject to the applicable issue and access rules.
Estratto per riassunto — Official extract summarizing principal information from a civil act and, where applicable, annotations.
Estratto plurilingue — Multilingual extract issued in a prescribed format where available; acceptance depends on the requesting authority and procedure.
Indice annuale — Index covering acts recorded in one year.
Indice decennale — Multi-year index, often organized by name or record type; not available for every series.
Numero dell'atto — Act number within a register; useful for locating and citing an original record.
Portale Antenati — Italian cultural heritage portal for accessing digitized civil-registration records and other available collections.
Processetti matrimoniali — Marriage supporting documents, a term commonly encountered in historical collections.
Pubblicazioni di matrimonio — Marriage banns or notices preceding a marriage.
Registro — Register or bound series of recorded acts.
Stato civile — The civil-registration system for recording births, marriages and deaths.
Tribunale — Court; in some archival collections, refers to the court-held duplicate series of civil registers.
Ufficio di Stato Civile — Municipal Civil Registry Office.
Parish and ecclesiastical records
Arcidiocesi — Archdiocese; a jurisdiction led by an archbishop.
Battesimo / Battesimi — Baptism / baptisms.
Celibe / Nubile — Unmarried man / unmarried woman; exact historical usage varies.
Compari / Comari — Context-dependent terms for godparents or ritual kinship; interpretation requires care.
Cresima — Confirmation, a Catholic sacrament recorded in some collections.
Defunti — Deceased persons; a term found in parish death or burial registers.
Diocesi — Diocese, an ecclesiastical jurisdiction comprising parishes.
Dispensa — Dispensation or permission granted under ecclesiastical rules; its purpose should be identified from the document.
Legittimo / Legittima — Legitimate; a historical legal or ecclesiastical status stated in some records.
Matrimonio / Matrimoni — Marriage / marriages.
Padrino / Madrina — Godfather / godmother; sometimes named in baptism records.
Parrocchia — Parish, a local ecclesiastical community and a key unit for church records.
Sepoltura / Sepolture — Burial / burials.
Stato delle anime / Status animarum — Parish household or population record, often listing residents by family group.
Testimoni — Witnesses to an act or ceremony.
Vedovo / Vedova — Widower / widow.
Historical geography and administration
Biscari — Historical name of Acate.
Castrogiovanni — Historical name of Enna.
Circondario / Distretto — Historical administrative districts; specific meaning depends on the date.
Contrada — Rural locality or district name, common in addresses and property descriptions.
Frazione — Settlement administratively belonging to a municipality.
Girgenti — Historical name of Agrigento.
Provincia — Province; boundaries and organization have changed over time.
Spaccaforno — Historical name of Ispica.
Terranova di Sicilia — Historical name associated with present-day Gela.
Val di Noto — Historical geographical and administrative designation in southeastern Sicily; not synonymous with the present municipality of Noto.
Other family-history sources and evidence
Ascendenti / Discendenti — Ancestors / descendants.
Catasto — Land or property cadastre; records may help locate historical holdings.
Censimento — Census or population enumeration.
Cognome — Surname or family name.
Filiazione — Parentage or descent relationship.
Lista di leva — Conscription list, generally organized by class or birth cohort. Foglio matricolare — Military service record, whose contents vary by army and period.
Nome — Given name, although the meaning of a field should always be checked in context.
Notarile / Atto notarile — Notarial / notarial deed or act.
Omonimo — Person with the same name as someone else; a frequent identification issue in genealogy.
Parenti collaterali — Relatives outside the direct ancestral line, such as siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Riveli di beni e anime — Historical Sicilian declarations concerning people and property, useful for some periods and localities.
Continue your research
Recognizing a word is only the first part of reading a historical record. Names, dates, relationships, places and the archival reference need to be assessed together. If a document is difficult to interpret or you need to extend a family line into older Sicilian records, Sicilian Ancestry can evaluate a targeted investigation.
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Related Research Guides
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Understand church records
Identify an ancestral municipality