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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Greek : from Italian levanti ‘Levantine’, ‘people from the East’, i.e. the eastern Mediterranean, in particular armed sailors or pirates during the Middle Ages. In Italian the word took on a negative connotation and came to mean ‘pirate’ and hence ‘undisciplined youth’, but in Greek the term has positive connotations of fearlessness and gallantry.

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