Messina
A surname tied to the Sicilian city of Messina, originally used for someone who came from there.
The #2,833 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 24,278 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Messina is a habitational surname: it identifies a person as being from the city of Messina in Sicily. The place name goes back to ancient forms of the city name, ultimately connected with the Greek and Latin traditions for the town. In surname use, it most likely meant simply “one from Messina.”
History
The name is especially associated with southern Italy and Sicily, where place-based surnames are common. It later spread through Italian migration, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, to the Americas and other diaspora communities. The OCR excerpts supplied here mention Messina only incidentally, not as a full dictionary entry, so the etymology is based on standard onomastic knowledge rather than those passages.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Messina is also the name of one of Sicily’s major port cities, which helped make the surname widely recognizable beyond Italy.
From the historical record
“Areola, Solferino, Magenta, Lucca, Taranto, Brindisi, Bres- cia, Casanova, - Elba, Li pari, - Terranova, Ragusa, Cefalu, Geraci, Cerda, Tivoli, - Catania, Messina, Campobello, Taor- mina, Termini, Nicosia. Bronte, Palma, Palermo, Marsala, Eufemia, Siracusa, Spartivento, - Manfredonia, Puzzuli (Puz- zuoli), Maremma.…”
— A Grammar of American Surnames