Moretti
also Moretto, Moro, Mauri
'The little dark one', Moreau's Italian cousin.
- Origin
- Italian
- Register
- Italian family
The Moretti arms
Coat of armsWappen Moro Siebmacher T117Johann Siebmacher · Public domain 
Coat of armsCoat of Arms of the House of MoroThe arms of the house itself: the main line, not one of its cadet branches.Facquis · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Coat of arms: Granted to an individual and inherited down that one documented line. These are the arms of particular families of the name, not of everyone who shares the surname.
The seat of Moretti
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Moretti community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.
Current mission
No shared goal set yet. Once Moretti has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Moretti clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.
Help rebuild the Moretti clan →What does the Moretti name mean?
From moro, 'Moor, dark one', with the diminutive -etto: 'the little dark one', for dark colouring, the Italian cousin of the French Moreau and Morin.
The history of Moretti
The little dark one, and the word underneath it
Moretti is built from moro, the medieval Italian word for a Moor and, by extension, for darkness of hair or complexion, carrying the affectionate diminutive -etto: the little dark one. It is a nickname surname, the type Italian produced in quantity, sitting alongside Rossi for the redhead and Mancini for the left-handed man. The same plain observation was made independently in the neighbouring Romance tongues, which is why France has Moreau and Morin, Spain has Moreno, and Italy has Moretti, Moretto, Moro and Mauri, with none of them borrowing the idea from the others.
The ending carries as much history as the root. Italian surnames took -ello, -etto and -ino for endearment (Morelli, Ferretti, Bellini), -one for size (Marconi), -accio for contempt (Boccacci). A family was then named in the plural: Filippo of the Ormanno household was Filippo degli Ormanni, the 'of the' dropped away, and the plural stayed stuck to a single man. Moretti is that construction exactly, the household of the little dark one, still showing its grammar.
Three hundred and fifty thousand names, and how Italy got them
Italy carries the largest stock of surnames of any country on earth, over 350,000 of them. Ancient Rome had hereditary names, the nomen of the clan and the cognomen of its branch, but that system was lost by the Middle Ages. Outside the aristocracy, where names came from manors, fiefs and fathers, most Italians began to take hereditary surnames around 1450.
The Council of Trent fixed what custom had started. From 1564 the registration of baptisms and marriages was compulsory in every parish, and the priest's book turned a neighbour's remark into an inherited legal fact, carried by sons who were not dark at all. The regional stamp survives in the endings: -ate and -atti in Lombardy (Moratti, Lunati, Bonatti), -ini and -ucci in Tuscany, -iello in Campania, -aro in Sicily, -u and -as in Sardinia. Moretti and its singular Moretto belong to that same suffix country.
The undiminished name in the Venetian lagoon
The same word without the diminutive belonged to a patrician house of Venice, the Moro, and their record shows what the root could carry. From 1388, the year Francesco Moro returned from the island of Negroponte, the house held a long influence in the republic's public life, and reached the summit of it in 1462 with the election of Cristoforo Moro (1390-1471) as the 67th doge, nine years after Mehmed II took Constantinople and with the Ottoman-Venetian wars running.
Moros served wherever the republic reached. Damiano Moro was provveditore of the Venetian army in the war against Ferrara of 1482-1484; a Giovanni Moro was duke of Candia, modern Crete, in 1538; another Giovanni Moro (1542-1592) sat in the senate, went as ambassador to France in 1581 and served as bailo at Constantinople from 1587. Their palaces still stand on the water: Palazzo Moro Lin on the Grand Canal, Palazzo Moro a San Barnaba in Dorsoduro, Palazzo Moro in San Salvador. After the republic fell in 1797 the family was counted among the nobility of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. No line of descent has been traced from that house to the Moretti; what the two share is the word.
Painters of the quattrocento and the trades that followed
The name runs through Italian art from the fifteenth century onward. Cristoforo Moretti was a Lombard painter of the quattrocento. Francesco Saverio Moretti (1800-1866) worked in the Marche; Tito Moretti (1840-1913) painted and illuminated manuscripts; Giangiacomo Moretti (born 1843), Croatian-born and Italian by career, took mainly genre subjects. Giuseppe Moretti (1857-1935) was an Italian sculptor.
Building carried the name as well. Joseph Moretti, who died in 1793, was an Italian-born German architect, and Luigi Moretti (1907-1973) practised as an Italian architect. In the market rather than the studio, Fabrizio Moretti (born 1976) works as an Italian art dealer.
A guitar in Moretti hands, 1769 to now
Fedorico Moretti (1769-1839) was an Italian composer, musical theorist and guitarist, and the instrument keeps returning to the name: Filomena Moretti (born 1973) is an Italian classical guitarist and Joe Moretti (1938-2012) was a Scottish guitarist. Giovanni Moretti (1807-1884) composed and conducted in Naples. Bruno Moretti (born 1957) composes and has worked repeatedly with the choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti.
The name turns up on stages well outside Italy. Raoul Moretti (1893-1954) was a French composer of film scores; Isabelle Moretti (born 1964) is a French harpist; Kennedy Moretti (born 1966) is a Brazilian pianist and music professor; Amy Schwartz Moretti is an American violinist; and Fabrizio Moretti (born 1980), born in Brazil, drums for the American band The Strokes.
Botany, medicine and the reading of books
Giuseppe Moretti (1782-1853) was an Italian botanist. Amalia Moretti (1872-1947) practised as a physician and wrote as a journalist.
In letters, Marino Moretti (1885-1979) was an Italian poet and author. Franco Moretti (born 1950) is an Italian literary scholar; Frank Moretti (1943-2013) was a professor at Columbia University; and Enrico Moretti, Italian-born, works as an American economist.
The parish, the parliament and the partisan
Michele Moretti (1908-1995) was an Italian partisan, a trade unionist and a footballer. In elected office the name is spread across three countries: Alessandra Moretti (born 1973) and Luigi Moretti (born 1944) are Italian politicians, Alice Moretti (1921-2022) was a Swiss politician, and Bob Moretti (1936-1984) was a Californian politician.
The church sent it further still. Giovanni Moretti (1923-2018) served as Apostolic Pro-Nuncio of Thailand and Apostolic Delegate to Malaysia, Singapore and Laos. Luigi Moretti (born 1949) was Roman Catholic Archbishop of Salerno-Campagna-Acerno from 2010 to 2019. In France, Éric Dupond-Moretti (born 1961) made his name as a criminal defence lawyer.
How far a nickname travelled
The name is carried well beyond Italy. Hans Moretti (1928-2013) was a Ukrainian illusionist and escapologist; Hector Moretti (born 1973) played professional tennis for Argentina; Bruno Moretti (1941-2021) competed for Australia as a Paralympian; the Swiss ski mountaineers Cristina Favre-Moretti (born 1963) and Isabella Crettenand-Moretti (born 1963) also run long distance and ride mountain bikes. Tobias Moretti (born 1959) acts in Austria, Michèle Moretti (born 1940) in France, David Moretti (born 1981) in the United States.
At home the name stayed busy in every direction at once. Nanni Moretti (born 1953) directs, produces and acts; Chiara Moretti (1955-2023) acted; Giampiero Moretti (1940-2012) raced cars and Marzio Moretti (born 2002) races them now; Paolo Moretti (born 1970) played and coached basketball and his son Davide (born 1998) plays it. Emiliano Moretti (born 1981) played football, Elena Moretti (born 1987) took up judo, Luca Moretti (born 2000) plays rugby league for Italy. Mario Moretti Polegato (born 1952) founded the company Geox, and Mauro Moretti (born 1953) ran Leonardo S.p.A. as chief executive and general manager. For a name that began as a remark about one man's colouring, that is a long way carried.
The castles of the homeland
The great strongholds of the homeland, look one up, see what it looked like in its prime, and recreate it to explore.
Castel Sant'AngeloStill standing · prime 139
Sforza CastleRestored · prime 1498
Castle of Rocca CalascioPartial ruin · prime 1300All castles in Italy → · Strongest castles in Italy → · Castles of Europe
Play As Your Clan
Hold a real castle against whatever you choose to send at it, take a ship out in her own service years, or stand at the shoulder of someone the record remembers. The chronicler sets the scene; the deeds are yours.