Does anyone know anything about the surname Quezel, especially in Sorrento (or southern Italy in general)?
It seems to be from the Occitan language, but then it's most common in Savoy, which is Arpitan and not Occitan. Why would a Savoyard or Occitan family move to that part of Italy, is there a documented emigration from that area to Italy? Is the family actually Occitan, or something else?
I can't find any records of my ancestors that really go anywhere...
I looked up your surname in some Italian sources.
This is the gens labo one that was done from phone book information. There is someone in Sorrento, and a few more in the Veneto. I can't tell from this the direction of the movement, i.e. whether there was a branch in the Veneto that moved south or vice versa.
http://www.gens.info/italia/it/turi...-italia?cognome=Quezel&x=32&y=15#.WAqRpeArLNM
This is from another source:
http://locatemyname.com/it/Quezel
The largest number around the world seem to be from France, and then Canada, so no doubt French-Canadian.
In Italy this is what they find:
I don't think you'd be far off track in hypothesizing that the first Quezal family in Italy was actually from France.
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Migliori nelle Regioni Locali
- Veneto = 4
- Campania = 2
- Liguria = 1
- Trentino-Alto Adige=1
Without a genealogical trail, it's not clear whether the surname could have reached Naples directly or whether it was mediated through migrants from Liguria (of which there were many) or the Veneto. If it reached Naples directly, it could have been with the Angevins. See the following:
https://italianangevins2013.wordpress.com/who-where-were-the-italian-angevins/
You can find a lot more information on Angevin rule, and the rebellion against them, on the internet.
Records for births and deaths, marriages etc. are all documented in Italy, back to the mid-1500s at least, because of the Council of Trent. However, when you're talking about 16th, 17th century etc. it's all in church records, so it's rather laborious going from church to church and reading some moldering volumes to get the exact trail. Before the mid-1500's, there's very little.
It sounds as if you've done some research if you know they didn't move much if at all from what you can see. That's typical for large groups of Italians, especially if they were farmers or even just came from small, rural areas. What that tells you is that whatever the origin of the surname and the first man in Italy to bear it, your ancestors shortly became autosomally Italian, and in your case southern Italian.
If you test at somewhere like 23andme you'll see that, I'm pretty sure.
By the way, Sorrento is a nice little tourist town today with a beautiful setting, and is a perfect base of operations for exploring the Amalfi coast, Vesuvius, Capri and Ischia.
