If your surname is based on the name of a place, do you have ancestry from there?

[Sikeliot]

I have seen an Italian woman in my area with the surname "Tangerini" -- does this mean somewhere back, she has an ancestor from Tangier in Morocco? Similarly, if your username is Greco, Albanese, etc. does this mean your ancestry consists of a Greek person, an Albanian, etc?

This is not just in Italian but many, many languages, surnames can be based on the name of a city or country. Do people with these surnames actually have a distant ancestor from these places?

[Gründig]

I have a great great grandfather with a surname of an Austrian city close to the german border.

I can't say with certainty that he is from there. However, 23andme and some different calculators definitely point in the direction of Austria.

[Kriptc06]

my surname is a patronymic, but my grandmother has Viana surname, and indeed we have ancestry in Viana do Castelo, Portugal. idk about your surname tho.

[Catarinense1998]

Not.A lot of ex slaves got their surnames from their ruler.

[Tacitus]

Not necessarily. For example the surname "Genovese" ("from Genoa"), is fairly common in the Naples area but it doesn't have to mean all those people have origins in Genoa. In the case of Genovese, it could also be a nickname since people from Genoa are stereotyped as being stingy so it was a way to call someone as such. "Tedesco" ("German") could be a nickname for someone with fair features or "Turco" ("Turkish") for someone swarthy, etc.

I've got two toponymic names in my family tree FWIW (Pisano and Albanese) but I don't know if - or think - I actually have ancestry from Pisa or Albania based solely on that.

[GreentheViper]

My paternal side has many Spanish surnames from places in Spain and the Basque region but I don't know my paternal side very well so I can't confirm, nor do I get Basque on Eurogenes very often.

[kleenex]

Christopoulos=Christ City (pretty simple)

[Berlko2]

My maternal great-grandmother (Italian) has a surname that is the same of a town. Her family comes from a nearby village, so maybe my ancestors were named after the town, which is probable given that the town’s name (and my ggmother surname) means “place on the heights” in Ligurian.

[Gwydion]

My maternal grandmother's surname is apparently fairly rare and designates a village from Northumberland in England or so that is the predominate theory I've read. Problem is her last ancestor in England before migrating to the United States was from Lincolnshire. I imagine it possible further back her ancestors may have moved further south from the surname village, but no way to prove it at this time.

[Vojnik]

I've got two toponymic names in my family tree FWIW (Pisano and Albanese) but I don't know if - or think - I actually have ancestry from Pisa or Albania based solely on that.

There's an Australia politician, who's Father is Italian and Mother Irish. Hes name is Anthony Albanese. Is it a common Italian surname? I wouldn't think so.