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Most Popular Italian Surnames — Costa

Most Popular Italian Surnames — Costa

October 06, 2022

Number 14 Italian Surname Costa

So number 14 on the list of most popular Italian Surnames — Costa. Here’s one that I thought would be at least in the top 10. I think I know more Costa’s than any other name on the list. That being said some are also Spanish and Portuguese. Costa is the 251st most common surname in the World.

Costa(Italian: [ˈkɔsta], Portuguese: [ˈkɔʃtɐ, ˈkɔstɐ], Galician: [ˈkɔstɐ], Spanish: [ˈkosta], Catalan: [ˈkɔstə, ˈkɔsta]), sometimes da Costaor Da Costa, is an Italian(particularly in Liguria, Piedmontand Sardinia), Portuguese, Galician, Spanishand Catalansurname. Because of colonization and immigration, it is found throughout Latin America, being particularly common in Braziland Argentina. It is also a surname chosen by Jews, due to Roman Catholicconversions.

There is also an unrelated Lebanese ‘Costa’ surname.[citation needed]

In Italy, Portugal, Galicia and Catalonia it is derived from the Latin word COSTA, “rib”, which has come to mean slope, coast, in Romance languages. In the rest of Spain it comes from Catalonia or from Galicia, being the Spanish equivalent Cuesta.[1]

Wikipedia

This famous surname is recorded in many spellings throughout Europe. Its origins are in fact Roman (Latin) and it describes a person who lived by or on a ‘costa’, normally a riverbank, but sometimes ‘the coast’. The original translation from the pre Christian era of a ‘costa’ was the side (of a building), and by transference ‘the side of a river’. The spelling forms are found as the French Coste, Cote, Lacoste, Delacoste and Delcote, the Provencal Costa, and Costes, the Spanish and Portugese Acosta, Costa, and Cuesta, the Catalan Costa and Costas, the Italian Costa, Costi, and Da Costa, whilst the French diminutive spellings include Costel, Costeau, Cousteau, Cotteaux, Costiou, Coustet, Couston, Coustille, Costy, and the Spanish Costilla. Curiously the name when found in England as Cost, Coste, and Costa is not usually from this source at all, but from a nickname shortform of the Greek personal name ‘Constantine’, and as such ‘imported’ by the Crusders in the 12th century. Early examples of the surname recording from different countries include Thomas Coste who married Elizabeth Showner at All Hallows, London, England, in 1547, Sebastia Fortia Costa, who married Eluaria Matona at Bagur, San Pedro, Gerona, Spain, on March 10th 1613, Pierre de la Coste, who married Maria Dupuys, at La Rochelle, France, on April 13th 1614, and Mary Catherine Costa, christened at San Francisco, California, USA, on July 12th 1875. The coat of arms associated with the surnamew has the blazon of a blue field, a gold chevron pierced with a mans rib all gold, beneath two red roses. On a gold chief, a black imperial eagle displayed. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Miguel Martinez Costa, which was dated March 21st 1612, christened at Miranda de Arga, Navarra, Spain, during the reign of King Philip 111 of Spain, 1598 – 1621. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to “develop” often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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Geographical distribution

As of 2014, 71.0% of all known bearers of the surname Costawere residents of Brazil(frequency 1:141), 7.6% of Portugal(1:67), 5.2% of Mozambique(1:255), 3.7% of Italy(1:801), 2.4% of the United States(1:7,460), 1.9% of Guinea-Bissau(1:44), 1.5% of Spain(1:1,531), 1.2% of East Timor(1:49) and 1.2% of Argentina(1:1,809).

In Brazil, the frequency of the surname was higher than national average (1:141) in the following states:

Maranhão(1:46)
Amapá(1:60)
Pará(1:74)
Roraima(1:77)
Acre(1:93)
Rio Grande do Norte(1:97)
Amazonas(1:98)
Ceará(1:112)
Bahia(1:112)
Tocantins(1:113)
Sergipe(1:117)
Piauí(1:119)
Paraíba(1:120)
Alagoas(1:131)
Federal District(1:131)
Minas Gerais(1:140)

In Italy, the frequency of the surname was higher than national average (1:801) in the following regions:

Liguria(1:214)
Sicily(1:374)
Piedmont(1:458)
Veneto(1:489)
Emilia-Romagna(1:676)
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol(1:763)
Lombardy(1:784)

In Spain, the frequency of the surname was higher than national average (1:1,531) in the following autonomous communities:[2]

Costa Links

Costa Link from Ancestry

Costa Link from Forbears

Costa Link from iGenea. They have a project.

Description:The Costa Family Project seeks to find common heritage through sharing of information and dna testing. Any variant spellings are welcome. Due to the fact that surnames in families of Iberian origin are often inherited matrilineally, mtDNA results will also be included in this project. O projeto da família Costa busca encontrar ancestrais comuns através do compartilhamento de informações e de testes de DNA. Quaisquer variações do sobrenome são bem-vindas. Devido ao fato de famílias de origens ibéricas muitas vezes herdarem sobrenomes pela linha feminina, resultados de DNA mitocondrial também serão incluídos neste projeto.

Requirements:A Surname Project traces members of a family that share a common surname. They are of the most interest in cultures where surnames are passed on from father to son like the Y-Chromosome. This project is for males taking a Y-Chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) test. Thus, the individual who tests must be a male who wants to check his direct paternal line (father’s father’s father’s…) with a Y-DNA12, Y-DNA37, Y-DNA67, or Y-DNA111 test and who has one of the surnames listed for the project. Females do not carry their father’s Y-DNA. Females who would like to check their father’s direct paternal line can have a male relative with his surname order a Y-DNA test. Females can also order an mtDNA test for themselves such as the mtDNAPlus test or the mtFullSequence test and participate in an mtDNA project. Both men and women may take our autosomal Family Finder test to discover recent relationships across all family lines.