Catania

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A metropolitan city of Sicily, Italy

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Catania is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 97K(measured from records)
  • ITItaly≈1 in 5.5K
  • MTMalta≈1 in 17K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Italy (inferred from the name graph)

≈11,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
307 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 5.5K (inferred from the name graph)

Italy, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

CataniaLatin(measured from records)
ΚατανιαGreek(measured from records)

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Catania (a metropolitan city of Sicily, Italy)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

How Catania is read(measured from records)

Catania is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English53%

    A metropolitan city of Sicily, Italy.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

    prov & town, Italy

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • Spanish20%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Catania in Spanish.

  • Italian11%

    Catania (a metropolitan city of Sicily, Italy)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

    E formato dal toponimo Aieéllo, molto comune nel Sud (SA, TE, ecc., e Aiello del Sabato AV, Aiello Ca- . labro CS), che corrisponde al tipo toponomastico Ageéllo e Géllo della Toscana, Azéglio, Zéelo e Zéllo, Zélli del Nord (vy. D’Azéglio e Gelli), derivato dal latino agellus “piccolo podere, campicello”.

    as a nameDizionario dei cognomi italiani

    oriundo da cidade ou província siciliana de Catania

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • French7.3%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Catania in French.

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Catania counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Catania is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IT Italy—≈11,000 est.≈1 in 5.5KlistedCatania62
CN China—≈4,300 est.≈1 in 323K—Catania3
US United States—3,4121 in 97K3.4KCatania307
PK Pakistan—≈2,500 est.≈1 in 93K—Catania1
AR Argentina—1,8451 in 25K1.8K—4
CH Switzerland—1881 in 45K188Catania10
UY Uruguay—1181 in 29K118——
MT Malta#230≈27 est.≈1 in 17K—Catania42

Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); the italian-surnames-defelice-1978 register; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Catania is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Spain, Italy

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Catañia, Càtànià, Cátánįã, Càtània, Catânia

  • Italian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, United Kingdom, Spain

    Also written Càtania

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Italy, United States, Belgium

    Also written Càtànià, Càtanià

  • Polish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Italy, United Kingdom

    Also written Katania, Câtàñïâ

  • Indonesian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Italy

    Also written Càtanîâ

37 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

19201940196019802000Anthony Charles Catania, b. 1936Nick Catania, b. 1945Antonio Catania, b. 1952Mario Catania, b. 1952Kenneth C. Catania, b. 1965David Catania, b. 1968Modern Leonardo Da Vinci, b. 1979Simone Catania, b. 1980Emanuele Catania, b. 1988Gotami Theri, b. 1999

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 28 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting Catania
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.4K#9,527
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.3K#9,115
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203.1K#9,815
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—1.8K—
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024188#6,619
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—118—
IT ItalyDizionario dei Cognomi Italiani (De Felice, 1978)———
IT Italy意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Catania come from?
Catania (a metropolitan city of Sicily, Italy) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
What does the name Catania mean?
In English, A metropolitan city of Sicily, Italy.
In which country does Catania have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 11 thousand people named Catania in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled catania.
How common is the name Catania?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,412 people named Catania in 2010, about 1 in 97 thousand residents.
How common is Catania compared with other names?
In Malta, Catania is the 230th most common surname of 5,132 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Catania?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/catania

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Catania” — the 230th most common surname in Malta. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Catania parses inside a full name →