Most Italian Americans are Campanian origin, going by surnames.

[alfieb]

I had thought Esposito was pan-Italian. It is one of the most popular Italian surnames in both countries.

[Sikeliot]

Everyone I've ever seen with it has been Campanian. A few of the tally marks for Campania in my first post when counting surname origins, were named Esposito btw.

[Peyrol]

I had thought Esposito was pan-Italian. It is one of the most popular Italian surnames in both countries.

The origin is neapolitan, but with the internal migrations now is spreaded everywhere...

[Prince Carlo]

100 random people? Yes sure.

http://www.clevelandmemory.org/italians/partii.html

20% of Italian American have ancestry from the Central Northern parts of Italy. The other 80% came from the South. They geographical origin.

Naples area 1,105,802 (27.4%)
Abruzzi and Molise 652,972 (16.2%)
Apulia 300,152 (7.4%)
Basilicata 232,389 (5.8%)
Calabria 522,422 (13.0%)
Sicily 1,205,788 (29.9%)
Sardinia 14,669 (.04%)

So Sicilians are the biggest group.

EDIT of course these are only the ones who went in the US. ~70% of Italians returned to Italy after some years.

[alfieb]

Naples area 1,105,802 (27.4%)
Abruzzi and Molise 652,972 (16.2%)
Apulia 300,152 (7.4%)
Basilicata 232,389 (5.8%)
Calabria 522,422 (13.0%)
Sicily 1,205,788 (29.9%)
Sardinia 14,669 (.04%)

So Sicilians are the biggest group.

Flaw in that logic.

That's presuming that a) the percentages are accurate, b) all Italian migrants kept to their own people, and c) had the same reproduction rate.

In other words, a fallacy.

I know a lot of Americans of Southern Italian origin that (still to this day) look down on Sicilian-Americans, and the reverse, Sicilians who look down on Southern Italians as well. Most Sicilian-Americans I know aren't mixed with other Italian groups, whereas I don't know many 100% Calabrian, 100% Campanian, 100% Apulian, 100% Lucanians. People whose families came from the Mezzogiorno/Kingdom of Naples intermix with one-another at a higher rate with each-other than they do with Sicilians.

So, even if your statistics were accurate, and there were 2% more immigrants from Sicily than from Campania, nonetheless there would still be more people of partial Campanian descent due to diaspora Campanians mixing with people whose parents were from neighboring regions, and more likely than not, ones that spoke Neapolitan (such as Cosentine Calabrians).

At the end of the day, most Sicilian migrants came to the United States from the port of Palermo, and most Southern Italian migrants regardless of town or region of origin came from boats departing from Naples (including some Sicilians).

[Prince Carlo]

What a bunch of rubbish. First of all no Italians look down upon other Italians. The only expection may be some Lega Nord types who still live in 19th century.

Second these stats are far more reliable than the one posted by Sik.

[alfieb]

What a bunch of rubbish. First of all no Italians look down upon other Italians. The only expection may be some Lega Nord types who still live in 19th century.

Second these stats are far more reliable than the one posted by Sik.

Your stats are of immigrants from the century post-unification (186x-196x), (which would exclude my family for example) while his stats are of people who are alive today.

And if you don't believe that many Italian-Americans are regionalistic, then you don't know much about the diaspora. When you go into an Italian restaurant or pizzeria and talk to the people who work there, one of the first topics of conversation (both from them asking you and from you to them) is very likely to be the region that your family come from.

[Prince Carlo]

Italians who went in the US before and after that time period makes max 5% of total Italian American population. That's not a big deal.

BTW Any country in the world has some kind of regionalism. But we were talking about having a superiority complex, which is not really the case (excluding Lega Nord types of course).

[xajapa]

In my area, most of us came from Abbruzzo, Molise and Campania. My ancestors came from Molise, although at the time of emigration there was no Molise.

[Scholarios]

I believe this regionalism that was common in 19th Century has been locked in time among the diaspora, therefore creating a cultural difference between Italians and Italian-Americans (there is some similar phenomenon with Greek-Americans who seem to be trapped in the past). If I met Sicilian or Calabrese Americans with any real connection to their culture, they always understood the difference between North and South. But when I meet Italians from Italy, they are quick to point out that "we are all Italians".

Joseph, is this a product of Education in Italy? Or do you think it's just a natural consequence of Southerners moving North and mixing?

p.s. I believe Italian Americans are like 17 million, making them around 15-20% of world Italian population ( I do not count Italian-Canadians, Australians etc.)