Late medieval Maltese surnames of Arabic and Greek origin

Abstract

As a contribution to the historical study of Maltese and Greater Sicilian onomastics, this article is an analysis of fifteenth-century Maltese surnames of low frequency (5 or less occurrences in the militia lists of 1419 and 1480) which are of certain Greek or Arabic origin. Each surname is analysed in terms of its etymology, meaning and known geographical distribution in Sicily or elsewhere in Italy.peer-reviewe