Submitted Surname Revision History

This surname is to be found in north-eastern Italy, more specifically in the Vicenza and Verona provinces. Families with this name are certain to be originally from the mountain town of Asiago, situated on a plateau north of Vicenza and now a well-known skiing resort. The name has a German origin, most probably from moos = "bog, wet, wetlands", and the German diminutive ele. The Asiago area, called 'Sette Comuni', in the Vicenza province, as well another mountain area in the Verona province, called 'Tredici Comuni', were settled by Germanic people coming from southern Germany probably around 1100. People in those two small regions kept their ancient German dialect for centuries. Now only a few still speaks it, but many surnames, names of places, streets, are still clearly German.