Surnames
I'm looking for information on the surnames, Rochita and Mazzuchi. I really don't even know what ethnicity they are.
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I would say that Mazzuchi is Italian, because of the zz. If Italian, I think it would be pronounced Mats-oo-ki. I think.
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Mazzucchi - looks like a tricky one. According to Jean Tosti (www.jtosti.com/noms)it's a hypocoristic form of Giacomo (James in English); Giacomazzo -> Mazzo -> Mazzucco, surname form Mazzucchi.
I can't say I'm convinced by those "diminutives". Ettore Rossoni, on his surname site, states that Mazzucchi is from an old male given name, Mazuccus, and he gives an example from 1194. He then goes on to suggest that Mazuccus was the Latin name of a King of the Huns called Mundjuk in his own language. At that point my credibility was stretched too far and broke.
To sum up, it's a Northern Italian surname of unknown meaning.Rochita - is it a surname? Rocha is a Spanish surname.
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According to http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Rocha-places-origin.ashx, Rocha is Portuguese and Galician as opposed to Spanish.Nothing on Rochita, though. Looks like a given name variant of Rashida, which you can look up on the main site: http://www.behindthename.com/name/rashida
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