We always talk about the “old days” when we followed traditions the family held onto, mostly in reference to food, family gathering, religious practice etc. These are all a great part of our family history, but they don’t help us with our genealogy research. Some of those traditions are so ingrained that they are never talked about. They just “are.”

One of the areas of ‘tradition’ we look at as genealogists is the way our Italian families named their children. Even if we grow up Italian and choose to not research the family tree, if we see a chart made by someone else, it’s often the first thing we notice. “Geez, why are there six Josephs in this family?” or “Nonna had four grandsons named Carlo, and six granddaughters named Maria.”