How to Look Up Relatives in Sicily by Using a Surname
- 1). Ask family members. Talk about family history and original names of family members. Find out about birth places, places of residence and dates and timelines related to the life of the person you are searching. Ask family members about schools and churches the person attended, or where they may have worked, to give you more specific ideas of where the person was from. Sicilian surnames are commonly bestowed upon people in reference to the town where they lived.
- 2). Plug record information into genealogy databases. Log online and visit databases constructed specifically for genealogy research. Sign up with Ancestry.com, for example, and post -- or compare previous postings -- of biographical information related to your relatives. Visit the Italian Genealogical Group website to search naturalization records based on Sicilian districts. Go through the records archived by EllisIsland.org to search for Sicilian provinces and communes from which the family member may have derived a surname.
- 3). Compare your findings to Sicilian maps. Find detailed Sicilian maps, depicting as many original towns as possible. Contact the civil office for the Sicilian town in which you are interested. Explain your issue to the civil office representative and ask how you can obtain birth and family records related to your search.