Luciano

Recorded in many forms including Lucius (French), Lucian (Provencal), Luciani, Luciano (Italian), Lujan (Spanish), Lucio (Portugese). Lukianov (Russian), and Lukianovich (Ukraine), this is a surname of ultimately Roman (Latin) pre Christian origins. It derives from the word "lucius" which it is said originally meant "light", and later became a personal name which was carried by a number of early Christian saints in the first to the fifth centuries. Most of these original disciples were martyrd for their faith, and hence guaranteed a place in religious history. There was nothing like a martyrdom to spur on the later medieval popularity, when all things biblical became the passion, and particlarly so in the creation of European personal names and later surnames. The period after the First Millenium became one where new thinking began throughout the Western World, and this lead to a need to develop new traditions and new faith. The result was a revitalised interest in history and religion, which lead to the famous Crusades. This surname resulted from this new force, in that it became the fashion for returning warriors to call their children by biblical names, rather than by the traditional and sometimes pagan, ancestoral forms.