Locarno

Recorded in several spellings including Locarno, Losano, Losanna, Losanese, Lozano, and possibly others, this is a surname of Italian-Swiss origins. It is locational and originates from the city of Locarno, and like most such names was one that was given to a person who had left Locarno and travelled elsewhere to live. It was in medieval times, and it remains so today, that one of the easiest ways to identify a stranger was to call him or sometimes her, by the name of the place from whence they came. Spelling over the centuries since the first creation of surnames in or about the 14th century, being at best indifferent, and local dialects to say nothing of different languages, being very thick, soon lead to the development of "sounds like" spellings. In addition we have a problem with Italian surnames that for fifteen hundred years after the fall of the Roman Empire in about the year 600 a.d, through to the year 1860, the country was simply a loose federation of states, and central records rarely existed. Such matters were left to the principalities who usually did not bother, meaning that recordings are often very poor. However in this case good examples of recordings do survive and they include: Pedro Lozano, the son of Juan Buatista Lozano, christened at Abenga, Genova, on January 1st 1748, and Joseph Antoine Losano, a witness at Scalenghe, Torino, on February 18th 1779.