I am trying to discover genealogical links in Italy and Sicily pertaining
to my family name Tedesco. Uncorroborated family lore pointed to
of Jewish heritage in Austria. I know of a Paul M. Tedesco, a Viennese Jew,
who taught Indo-Iranian linguistics at Princeton and Yale in the 1960s. My
paternal lineage was rather small and ostracized in Marsala, western Sicily.
Any clues are very welcome.

Frank Tedesco
Largo, Florida

TEDESCO in Italian means German. My best guess is that immigrants to Italy from German speaking countries who did not have a last name, or did not want to continue with their original one, changed it. In my genealogy database, I have TEDESCO from the late 1700s, all probably born in northern Italy. to my family name Tedesco. Uncorroborated family lore pointed to
of Jewish heritage in Austria.”

Tedesco isn't a name for a Jew, it is a word for German.  Teutons, in Italian.

Sally Bruckheimer
Princeton, NJ

Tedesco was also used, at least during the Renaissance, to designate, in Italian, that a composer was of German origin.  .

To do research on Sephardic names in particular and Separdic genealogy in general, I can recommend two seminal books: Tagger and Kerem, Guidebook for Sephardic and Oriental Sources in Israel, and Malka, Sephardic Genealogy: Discovering your Sephardic Ancestors and their World.
Joyce Field
W. Lafayette, Indiana

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