For people learning Italian
Italian for Genealogy: how to read birth, marriage and death records
You do not need to speak Italian to read an Italian birth record. You need about forty words, and to know that one of them changes the meaning of the whole document.
The forty words that do the work
Civil records are formulaic. The same sentences repeat for a century, which is excellent news: learn the formula once and you can read every record in the register.
| l’atto di nascita | birth record |
| l’atto di matrimonio | marriage record |
| l’atto di morte | death record |
| lo stato civile | the civil registry |
| il comune | the municipality — the unit that holds the records |
| la provincia | the province |
| l’ufficiale dello stato civile | the registrar |
| la levatrice / l’ostetrica | the midwife, who often reports the birth |
| il testimone / i testimoni | the witness / witnesses |
| il contadino | farmer — by far the commonest occupation you will meet |
| la casalinga | housewife |
| il possidente | landowner |
| domiciliato in | residing in |
| nato / nata in | born in |
| coniugato / coniugata con | married to |
| vedovo / vedova di | widower / widow of |
| gli allegati | the attached documents, often the richest part |
| l’anno millenovecento… | the year nineteen… — dates are written out in full |
The one word that changes everything
In front of a father’s name you will find either di or fu.
- di Giuseppe — son or daughter of Giuseppe, who was alive when the record was made.
- fu Giuseppe — son or daughter of the late Giuseppe.
That is two letters, and it can tell you that a man died between one child’s birth and the next. Miss it and you will spend a month looking for a death record in the wrong decade.
Numbers and dates
Ages and dates are written as words, not digits: di anni trentadue, il giorno quindici del mese di marzo. Learning the numbers to one hundred is the single highest-return hour you can spend — see Italian numbers 1 to 100.
Where the records are
Italian civil registration begins in 1866 for most of the country, and earlier in the South, where Napoleonic administration introduced it around 1809. Before that you are in parish registers, in Latin — a different problem.
Many registers have been digitised by the State Archives and published on the national Portale Antenati. Records that are not online are held by the comune, and writing to a comune in Italian gets an answer far more often than writing in English.
When you get to that letter, see Italian for heritage travel — it covers writing to the comune and what to ask for.
