Salerno
A surname from the Italian city of Salerno, used for someone who came from or was associated with that place.
The #3,751 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 32,706 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Salerno is a habitational surname taken from the city of Salerno in southern Italy. In surname use, it would originally have identified a person as being "from Salerno." The place-name itself is ancient and has been in use since Roman times, though the deeper origin of the city name is not certain from the excerpted sources.
History
As an Italian surname, Salerno spread with migration from southern Italy to other parts of the peninsula and, later, to the Americas and elsewhere. In English-language records it is most often encountered as an Italian immigrant surname. The provided source mentions Salerno among Italian place-based names, supporting its locational character rather than giving a separate family-origin story.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Salerno is both a surname and the name of a historic port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea, which helped make it a natural source of a family name.
From the historical record
“tamont, Susa, Pavia, Verona, Ravenna, Perugia, Ferrara, Florence, Santaeroce, Salerno, - Arno, Sarno, Adige, (see Tiber), Cosenza, Caserta, Bergamo, Loretto, Regio, Benevento, Sorrento, Gaeta, Monteverde, Monteleone, Montalbano, Novi, Como, Villalonga, Lodi, Marengo, Rivoli, Montebello, Areola, Solferino, Magenta…”
— A Grammar of American Surnames