List of Sicilian and Italian Occupations

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    Many Sicilian civil records show an individual’s ‘professione’, ‘occupazione’ or ‘condizione’ (profession, occupation, condition or status).   It is important to make note of these and understand them, as different persons may have the same names, but may be differentiated by their status.  Common occupations were ‘agricoltore’, ‘campagnolo’, and ‘contadino’, all of which some researchers translate as ‘farmer’.  That fails to reflect the actual condition or status of the individual.  An ‘agricoltore’, sometimes called a ‘massaro’, was generally the owner or manager of a farm, someone we might call a ‘gentleman farmer’.  A ‘campagnuolo’ was a ‘field hand’, hired by the ‘agricoltore’ for a day, week, or season’s work in the fields.  

  A ‘contadino’ was a peasant sharecropper (what might be called a ‘dirt farmer’), a class of landless workers who labored in the fields of a landlord (who was the landowner- farmer), not for wages but for an often meager share of the harvest.  The system was a remnant of feudalism, which was  'officially' abolished in 1812, but whose grip on the poor and uneducated lasted into the 20th century.   Clearly, there was a difference in status between these ‘condizioni’.

  City dwellers also had class-distinctive descriptors for their condition: ‘civile’, possidente, ‘proprietario’, ‘borgese’, ‘villico’ and ‘volgare’.   ‘Civile’ denoted an upper-class citizen, often a civil servant.  'Possidente' meant that the person was a land or property owner.  A ‘proprietario’ was a proprietor of a business or a landlord, often also a property owner.  A ‘borgese’ was a middle-class townsman.  ‘Villico’ is interpreted by many to mean simply ‘villager’, but it would never be applied to upper- or middle-class village residents.  Its meaning is closer to ‘peasant villager’.  And ‘volgare’ denotes the vulgar or lowest class, that of  ‘commoner’.  Another descriptor that was used in civil records from the early 1880’s through 1860 was ‘regnicolo’: literally, ‘subject of the Realm’, meaning ‘subject of the Realm of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.’

  Napoleonic-format civil records use a wealth of different ‘condizione’.  Some are listed below, and you will note that many surnames ultimately were derived from a person’s occupation or condition.  Most are shown in the Italian language, which is what was used in most civili records, even in Sicily.  A few, like 'carusu' and 'scarparu' are in the Sicilian language.

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The above are 'condizioni' that were found cited in Sicilian and Italian civil records of birth, marriage and death that were recorded during the 1800's and early

1900's.  For a more complete list, including modern occupations, see Michael Lodico's page at

www.lodico.org/mike/html/occupations.html

*carusu - caruso in Italian literally means 'dear boy', but was used extensively to indicate the job of mine-boys who carried raw sulfur ore out of the mine.  The term will not be found in official records, however, because of the shameful treatment of the children and the lassez-faire attitude of civil and church officials over this practice