Malta » Documents » Genealogy » Origine des noms a malte

Introduction

by Mario CASSAR

Malta (ancient Melita) is the name of the main island of a Mediterranean archipelago also composed of Gozo, Comino, and a number of uninhabited islands, with a total area of approximately 316 km². It is located about 93 kilometers (58 miles) from Capo Passero, the southern tip of Sicily, and about 289 km (180 miles) southeast of Cap Bon, the nearest point in Tunisia. A former British colony, Malta gained its independence in 1964 and became a republic in 1974. It is today a sovereign democratic state within the British Commonwealth and the European Union. Its national language is Maltese and English is a second official language. In 2005, life expectancy was 77.7 for men and 81.4 years for women (1). The birth, death, and marriage rates stood at 9.56, 7.76, and 5.88 (2). The number of immigrant arrivals in recent years was 339 (in 1999), 450 (in 2000), and 472 (in 2001). The figures for emigrant departures (excluding unrecorded migration) were 67 (in 1999) and 67 (in 2000) (3). According to the 2005 census, the population stood at 404,962 (4).

From the same source, the number of foreign nationals living in Malta reached 12,112. This means that only 392,850 (194,907 men and 197,943 women), or 97% of this population, are in fact Maltese. More than a third are British (4,713). However, according to the British Institute for Public Policy, at present there are some 9,000 British people living in Malta, of whom 3,597 are retirees who have chosen Malta as their place of retirement (5).

Malta was inhabited in ancient times by a Mediterranean race, whose megalithic monuments dating from the fourth and third millennium BC are still preserved to this day (6). The Phoenicians introduced an Eastern Semitic culture from the second half of the eighth century BC; their successors, the Carthaginians, established a Mediterranean political regime in the fifth century BC. This Punic heritage, which is obviously shared by Sicily and southern Italy, ended abruptly in 218 BC when, during the Second Punic War, the islands were annexed to the Roman Empire. The Romans annexed the Maltese islands to their first foreign province, Sicily (7).

Christianity arrived gradually in Malta during the first century AD, but it gained greater importance when Rome became the seat of the religion. In the period from the second half of the fifth century to the first half of the sixth century, Malta was occupied by barbarian hordes, the Vandals from North Africa and the Ostrogoths from Italy. Malta was included in the Byzantine Empire in the year 535 when Sicily and the neighboring islands were conquered by Justinian's general Belisarius (8). The island was then governed by the Arabs, the Normans, the Swabians, the Angevins, the Aragonese, the Knights of St John, the French, and the British. The historical chronology of these periods is dealt with in detail in the following chapters. They are, after all, at the origin of the repertoire of Maltese surnames, which can only be explained in the light of conquests and spheres of influence.

Despite its almost negligible size, Malta's colorful and eventful history has allowed a constant flow of foreign surnames. Its reservoir of surnames is truly astonishing, perhaps also explained by overpopulation. A total of 12,310 surnames was recorded in the 2005 census. 9,507 people (2.3% of the population) bore double names, while 8,965 people (2.2% of the population), for various reasons, bore no surname.

The origin of surnames comes from a characteristic or a peculiarity of their bearers, but today they have lost this characteristic and are more like labels simply indicating family membership. It is very easy to overlook their ethnic character, when in reality our heritage is assimilated into our surname. This very intimate mark is our only traceable historical link to our most precious and vital possession, our particular body, no matter how we perceive it. As Ralph Waldo Emerson so aptly said: "We are the sum of our ancestors."

Foreigners seeking an explanation about the Maltese may be surprised to learn that this country has had prime ministers with an English surname, such as Joseph Howard and Gerald Strickland; others were Italian, such as Paul Boffa, Enrico Mizzi, Alfred Sant, and Laurence Gonzi.

There were also some with names of Arabic origin such as Francesco Buhagiar, Ugo Mifsud, and Dom Mintoff, while three others had a compound name of two origins, George Borg Olivier, Edward Fenech Adami, and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. They were all Maltese and had never questioned it (9).

The Maltese language is of Semitic origin with a Romance structure. In the second half of the 20th century, under English influence, the language adopted new words of Anglo-Saxon origin. In accordance with the pattern of evolution of the mother tongue, Maltese names fall into three broad categories: (a) surnames belonging to the Semitic stock, (b) surnames belonging to the Romance stock, in turn divided into two categories, (i) those originating from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and (ii) those that have been present since the dawn of modern times, and (c) the wave of English, Irish, German, Slavic, and other names of European origin coming from more recent mixed marriages.

The number of surnames of Semitic origin is only about fifty, but each of them is borne by a significant number of families in Malta and Gozo, while most of the more modern Romance and European names, though more numerous, are borne by a small number of families, in some cases by just a handful (10). In frequency, the top twelve Semitic names in Malta are Borg, Farrugia, Zammit, Micallef, Cassar, Mifsud, Caruana, Agius, Fenech, Bugeja, Gauci, and Sammut; while the top twelve non-Semitic surnames are Camilleri, Vella, Galea, Grech (for Greco or Grechi), Attard (for Attardo/i), Spiteri, Azzopardi, Muscat (for Moscato/i), Schembri, Abela, Pace, and Gatt (for Gatto/i) (11).

Notes:

Demographic Review 2007, Malta: National Statistics Office [NSO], 2008, p. 48.
Demographic Review 2007, pp. 20, 30, 49. Crude rates are calculated according to occurrencies per 1,000 in total mid-year population.
European Union Encyclopedia and Dictionary 2005 [EUED], London: Europa Publications, 2004, p. 510.
The estimated population of Malta at the end of 2007 stood at 410,290. Cf. Demographic Review 2007, p. vi.
This statistical discrepancy can only infer that many Britons have only sojourned on a part time basis. In October 2006, Dr Tonio Borg, then Minister of Internal Affairs, acknowledged that 18,646 foreigners held a local identity card. 9,937 of these came from EU states. If one compares these numbers with the findings of the London Institute, it transpires that almost half of the foreign inhabitants in Malta hail from Great Britain; these amount to 90.6% of all EU residents. Cf. Il-Mument, 17/12/2006.
Cf. D. H. Trump, Malta: Prehistory and Temples, Midsea Books, Malta, 2002.
Cf. A. Bonanno, Malta: Phoenician, Punic, and Roman, Midsea Books, Malta, 2005.
Cf. A. Bonanno, 'Malta during Phoenician, Roman, and Byzantine Times: Outside Influence and Original Traits', in K. Gambin (ed.), Malta - Roots of a Nation: The Development of Malta from an Island People to an Island Nation, Malta: Heritage Malta, 2004, pp. 45--54.
E.V. Saliba, 'The Roots of Independence', The Sunday Times [of Malta], 22/4/07.
J. Aquilina, 'A Comparative Study in Lexical Material Relating to Nicknames and Surnames', Maltese Linguistic Surveys, Malta: The University of Malta, 1976, p. 191.
Camilleri admittedly provides a sort of conundrum; although deriving from Italian cammelliere, the term itself summons Siculo-Arabic nisba al-qamillari ('camel driver').

Text published with the kind permission of Mario CASSAR