The book
SORIO — The story of a Venetian surname, of its places and of those
who bore it
Mauro Sorio · 109 pages · 15 × 23 cm · in Italian
The articles on this site are written one at a time, and they are read one at a time: each covers a piece — a place, a person, an etymological hypothesis. At some point the research had grown too long to sit on a single page and too interwoven to be read in fragments. Hence the book: the same material set in order, from the twelfth century to the present, with the connections that stay implicit when the articles stand apart.
What is inside
Nineteen chapters in four parts, plus an epilogue and the reference apparatus.
- The word — the origin in Saint George, the phonetic evolution that leads from Georgius to Zorzo and at last to Sorio, the false friends (Iorio, Orio), the testing of the Lombard hypothesis, and the coat of arms with two hares sharing a single head.
- The places — Sorio of Gambellara and Monte Sorio, Villa Sorio, the Corte and the little church at San Giovanni Lupatoto, the battle of 8 April 1848, via Sorio in Padua, and the Corsican village called Sorio that has nothing to do with the Venetian one.
- The people — Cristoforo (1468), Giuseppe the traveller (1663–1742), Bartolomeo the philologist (1805–1867), the Sorios of Roncà, Leandro the anarchist (1899–1975), Ileana Chiappini di Sorio, Wilson the Brazilian footballer.
- The world — where the Sorios are today, and why there are more of them in the Philippines than in Italy.
At the back: a general chronology from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, the note on sources with the bibliography, an index of names and an index of places.
The thread is not blood, but the word. A shared name proves no kinship, but it opens a question.
Where to find it
The book is published in Italian only. An English edition is not planned for now — the articles on this site remain the English way in.
A way to support the project
To be clear from the start: you do not need the book in order to read this research. Everything in it is also here on the site, free, in four languages, and it will stay that way. No part of it is reserved for buyers, and none ever will be.
The book is for those who prefer paper, for those who would rather read the story straight through than in fragments, or for those who feel like supporting the project. Sorio.world carries no advertising, has no sponsors, asks for no sign-ups and gathers no data to resell. It does have small but real costs: the domain, the hosting, reproductions of archival documents, out-of-print volumes bought to check a footnote. Whoever buys the book covers those. It is the only financial support the project has, and that is fine.
If it is not for you, no matter: read the site, that is what it is there for.
The other ways to help
They cost nothing and, honestly, they are worth more:
- pointing out a mistake, a wrong date, a better source than the one I used;
- sending documents — deeds, photographs, letters, gravestones, signs, family registers in which the surname appears;
- reporting a Sorio, or a place bearing the name, of which there is no trace here;
- passing the site on to anyone who might have material or an interest in it.
The address is always the same: info@sorio.world.
The book is self-published: there is no publisher behind it, the typesetting is mine, and the price is kept to the minimum that print-on-demand allows. Corrections that reach me go into the reprints.