text: how can you tell a person's origin from his/her last name? such as "ciaramitaro" would be from italy, "cornelius" would be from greek? any ideas? well some are easy.  --greek peole tend to have "is", "us" "os" at the end of their name "spinakis, stephonopolus" --some jewish people have 'stein' or 'berg' or 'man' in their name...  rosenstein, goodman, speilberg --irish people have "o'" or "fitz" or "mac" like "o'mally" and "fitzpatrick" and "macdonald" --italian last names tend to end with "oni" or "o" or start with di.  "diangelo" "alberto" "romano" "belisconi" --many french names start with "de" "des" "du" and "le" or end with "eau" "elet" "elin" "elle"  --many russian names end in "ovich" or "ova". ----many polish surnames end with "owski".  lebowski, etc....