Louis Mendola > Quotes

“definitive Sicilian onomastic study, listing most Sicilian surnames and their localities of highest frequency, is Gerolamo Caracausi’s Dizionario Onomastico della Sicilia, published in 1994 in two volumes”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

“After Italian, Sicilian is the most widely spoken Italic language in Italy, followed closely by Neapolitan. Sicily has several Albanian communities founded in the fifteenth century, where Arberesh, the medieval Tosk dialect of Albanian, is spoken; this was the mother tongue of Francesco Crispi, Italy’s first Sicilian prime minister.”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

“Into the early decades of the fifteenth century, most Sicilians, both Christian and Jewish, lacked hereditary surnames.”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

“Genetic factors probably account for the extreme rarity of alcoholism among Sicilians.”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

“A good introduction to Italian onomatology (in English) is Joseph Fucilla’s Our Italian Surnames, first published in 1949,”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

“Socially, if we accept the modern paradigm that one is not guilty for his ancestors’ shortcomings, the same logic argues that he merits no special prestige or recognition for their achievements.”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

“but Sicily offers certain records unavailable elsewhere.”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

“There’s a saying that if you enter a room where two Italians are discussing something, you’ll come away with at least four or five different opinions.”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

“focus on eastern Sicily, is Gerhard Rohlfs’ Dizionario Storico dei Cognomi nella Sicilia Orientale (1984).”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

“In Sicily, which boasts an exceptionally diverse heritage ranging from Punics, Greeks and Romans to Jews, Normans and Swabians, a Y chromosome haplotype can be especially revealing.”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry

“Cicero’s words are just as resonant in plain English: “One who is ignorant of what happened before his birth will always be a child.”
― Louis Mendola, Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry