Italian Boy Names: 106 Names With Meanings and Pronunciations

Italian boy names run from classics like Leonardo, Francesco, Lorenzo and Matteo to short picks like Enzo, Elio and Ugo and vintage revivals like Ettore and Achille, and this list gives a checked usage and meaning for 106 Italian names for boys, plus 4 Sardinian names.

Italian names for boys come from a few deep wells. Many are Italian forms of saint and biblical names known across Europe (Giovanni, Pietro, Gabriele). Others come down from ancient Rome and Greek legend (Cesare, Ottavio, Ettore), and others began as nicknames and became names of their own (Gianni, Sandro, Dante).

We grouped the names by style: classics, short and strong names, the current favorites in Italy, vintage revivals, rare picks, saint and biblical names, masculine names ending in -a and -e, nicknames, names that travel well in English, and names from art and history. Then come notes on spelling, accents and pronunciation, and how to pick.

Italian Boy Names at a Glance

Every usage label, meaning and pronunciation here was checked against the name’s own entry on Behind the Name in October 2026. Where the reference calls a meaning unknown, uncertain or only possible, we say so.

Start with the classics. Behind the Name describes Italian names as names used in Italy and other Italian-speaking regions such as southern Switzerland, and its glossary notes that traditional Italian given names came from those of famous saints. That is why so many classics are Italian forms of names known across Europe: Giovanni from John, Pietro from Peter, Tommaso from Thomas. For ideas beyond Italian, see our main list of baby boy names. Naming a daughter instead? Head to our Italian girl names.

Several of these have a long record. Per Behind the Name, Giovanni has been very common in Italy since the late Middle Ages, Antonio has been common there since the 14th century, and Marco was widespread in medieval Venice, the city where Saint Mark was supposedly buried. The same reference notes that five Italian prime ministers have been named Luigi since the 19th century.

Short and Strong Italian Names for Boys

Short Italian names for boys have two or three syllables in the pronunciations the reference gives. If you want a strong meaning, look at the last column: Leone goes back to the Latin word for lion, Massimo to a Roman name meaning greatest, and Vito to the Latin word for life. Enzo is the honest exception, since the reference calls its meaning uncertain.

More strong meanings sit in the other tables: Leonardo (“brave lion”), Riccardo (“brave ruler”), Vincenzo (from a Latin verb meaning “to conquer”), Vittorio (“victor, conqueror”) and Valentino (“strong, vigorous, healthy”).

The Most Popular Boy Names in Italy and the Italian Forms of U.S. Favorites

Italy’s national statistics office, Istat, reports the most common baby names in its yearly release on births and fertility. The most recent release we could read in October 2026 covers babies born in 2024 and was published in October 2025. Leonardo was the most popular boys’ name nationally, a position Istat says it first reached in 2018. Edoardo stayed second and Tommaso third, while Francesco slipped two more places to sixth.

The same release shows a chart of the top five that also includes Alessandro and Mattia, and it describes regional differences: Leonardo led in most northern and central regions and on the islands, Edoardo was first in Umbria and Marche, Francesco was first in Molise, Puglia and Calabria, and Antonio was first in Campania and Basilicata. Istat also runs an online name counter that shows how many children were registered with a given name each year since 1999.

In the United States the chart looks different. According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), the top 10 names for boys born in 2025 were Liam, Noah, Oliver, Theodore, Henry, James, Elijah, Mateo, William and Lucas. None of the Italian spellings on this page is in that top 10, but every one of those names has an Italian counterpart with its own reference entry.

So if you love a chart-topper but want the Italian spelling, the swap is often small: Matteo for Mateo, Luca for Lucas, Elia for Elijah.

Old Italian Boy Names: Vintage Revivals

If you are looking for old Italian boy names, this is the style: names that sound like a great-grandfather’s and feel fresh again on a baby (our opinion on style, not a statistic). Many come straight from Greek and Roman legend and history, in their Italian forms: Ettore is Hector, Achille is Achilles, Ercole is Hercules, Cesare is Caesar and Ottavio is Octavius.

Per Behind the Name, Amedeo was the name of the chemist Amedeo Avogadro (1776 to 1856) and the painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani (1884 to 1920), and Umberto was the name of the author Umberto Eco (1932 to 2016). For more names in this style from other languages, see our old fashioned boy names list.

Unique and Rare Italian Names for Boys, Plus Four Sardinian Names

Looking for unique Italian names for boys? These are uncommon in the United States, and each one has its own entry in the reference. The table prints exactly what each entry says, including the word “unknown” where the reference uses it. The reference itself labels Orso as rare in Italian, and it gives Galileo and Giotto (in the art and history table below) the same label.

To see how common a name really is in the U.S., use the name search on the SSA baby names page. The SSA leaves out names with fewer than 5 occurrences to protect privacy, so a very rare name may not appear at all. For more ideas in this style, see our unique boy names.

Italy has more than one naming tradition, and the reference labels the next four names Sardinian, not Italian. Per Behind the Name, Sardinian names are used on the Italian island of Sardinia by speakers of Sardinian. The table prints the label exactly as each entry gives it.

The reference gives no pronunciation for these four, so if one of them comes from a community outside your own family, ask a speaker how it is said and used before you commit. We also looked for names labelled Sicilian or Neapolitan: the reference’s main list had no masculine names under either label when we checked, so none are printed here. Manfredi, in the table above, is the closest thing: an Italian name that its entry describes as a southern Italian form of Manfred.

Saint and Biblical Names in Their Italian Forms

Many Italian baby boy names are the Italian forms of biblical and saint names, and the table gives each one only as the reference states it. Two rows look alike on purpose: Raffaele and Raffaello are both listed as Italian forms of Raphael.

The saint stories come from the entries for the older names. Per Behind the Name, Saint Benedict was an Italian monk who founded the Benedictine order in the 6th century, Saint Ambrose was a 4th-century bishop of Milan who is considered a Doctor of the Church, and Saint Januarius, the saint behind Gennaro, is the patron saint of Naples. Saint Vitus, behind Vito, was a child martyred in Sicily in the early 4th century, and the reference’s entry for Raphael names the Renaissance painter Raffaello Sanzio (1483 to 1520), known in English as Raphael.

Italian Male Names Ending in -a and -e: Andrea, Luca, Nicola and More

Of the 106 Italian names on this page, 70 end in -o. The rest are worth a closer look, because English speakers do not always expect a boy’s name to end in -a or -e. Every name in this table is listed as masculine on its Italian entry.

Andrea is the one that surprises people most. Behind the Name gives the Italian name Andrea its own entry, labelled masculine, and keeps a separate entry for the feminine Andrea used in English, German, Spanish and other languages. If your son will grow up in the United States, expect to explain Andrea, Nicola, Michele and Simone now and then, and decide whether that bothers you. Elia, Tobia, Noè and Giosuè (in the biblical table) and Leone, Cesare, Ercole, Achille, Ettore and Dante are more masculine Italian names that do not end in -o.

Italian Nicknames and Names That Travel Well in English

Italian nicknames often became given names in their own right. Each row prints what the entry says the name is short for.

Lapo, in the rare names table, is a nickname too: a diminutive of Jacopo. So are two of the most famous names in Italian art, Dante and Donatello, which you will find further down.

If your family lives in two languages, look for a name that needs no explaining in either. The names below have no accent marks, and the usage column shows where else each one is at home.

Behind the Name lists English among the usages of Christian, Oscar and Cosmo, and lists modern English use for Luca. Its entries for Leonardo, Antonio, Dante, Romeo and Michelangelo print an English pronunciation next to the Italian one, a fair sign that English speakers already know the name. Romeo is best known as the lover of Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1596), which, per the reference, drew on earlier Italian stories.

Cool Italian Names From Art, Music, Science and History

Some names arrive with a famous bearer attached. This table includes a name only when its own reference entry mentions the person, so nothing here is our invention.

Other entries on this page name bearers as well. Per Behind the Name: Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519), the poet Francesco Petrarca (known in English as Petrarch), Lorenzo de’ Medici, Marco Polo, the composers Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, the painter Sandro Botticelli, the physicist Alessandro Volta, the filmmaker Federico Fellini and the racing driver and industrialist Enzo Ferrari. The entry for Michelangelo adds that it was also the given name of the Baroque artist better known as Caravaggio.

How Italian Names Sound: Spelling, Accents and Pronunciation

Italian spelling is regular once you know a few habits, and two of them matter for names. On double letters, Treccani’s Enciclopedia dell’Italiano explains that a doubled consonant marks a sound pronounced with more force than a single one, and that the difference can separate two words (its examples include caro and carro, note and notte). So the double letters in Matteo, Tommaso, Riccardo, Filippo and Giuseppe are meant to be heard.

On accents, the same encyclopedia says the written accent is obligatory on words stressed on the final vowel. By convention a, i and u take the grave accent, while on e and o the grave marks an open vowel and the acute a closed one. Inside a word the stress is normally not written. That is why Niccolò, Giosuè and Noè carry an accent and Giacomo and Davide, stressed on the first syllable, do not.

For pronunciation, we print only what the reference gives, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, plus a plain note that follows directly from it. The stress mark (ˈ) sits in front of the stressed syllable.

One paperwork point: the accent is part of the Italian spelling of Niccolò, Giosuè and Noè, but U.S. forms and records do not always carry accent marks. Ask your hospital or state vital records office what can be printed, and decide early how you will write the name.

How to Pick an Italian Name, Plus Sibling and Middle Name Ideas

A few practical checks before you fill in the birth certificate form:

• Family names: Behind the Name’s glossary notes that some Italian families name children after relatives in a set order: the first son after the father’s father and the second son after the mother’s father. If a grandfather’s name is on your shortlist, our names for grandparents guide can help with what the grandparents themselves will be called.
• Say it out loud: try the name with your surname in both languages and decide which pronunciation you will use at home.
• Nicknames: check the nickname table. If you love Giuseppe, expect Beppe or Pippo. If you love Lorenzo, expect Renzo or Enzo.
• Spelling: Niccolò and Nicola are both Italian forms of Nicholas, and Giacomo and Jacopo are both forms of the name behind James, so pick the form your family will actually say.

Brother pairs, as ideas and not rules: Leonardo and Tommaso, Matteo and Luca, Enzo and Elio, Ettore and Achille, Pietro and Paolo, Dante and Cosimo. For a sister, our Italian girl names list is organized the same way, so you can match a classic with a classic or a vintage revival with a vintage revival.

For a middle name, contrast helps: a short middle balances a long first name, and a longer middle gives a short first name some weight. Ideas: Leonardo Elia, Alessandro Ugo, Luca Valentino, Enzo Raffaele and Dante Massimo. Our middle names guide covers flow, rhythm and initials. Comparing traditions? See our French boy names and Irish boy names.

Related Betteroo Guides

• Italian girl names
• Baby boy names
• Unique boy names
• Old fashioned boy names
• French boy names
• Irish boy names

The Bottom Line

Italian names for boys cover every style: classics like Leonardo, Francesco and Matteo, short picks like Enzo, Elio and Vito, vintage revivals like Ettore and Amedeo, biblical forms like Gabriele and Elia, and nicknames like Gianni and Sandro that stand on their own. Shortlist three to five, check the meaning, listen to the Italian pronunciation, decide how you will handle an accent mark on U.S. paperwork, and say each name out loud with your surname.

Once the name is settled, sleep is the next project: our newborn sleep schedule week by week is a gentle place to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Betteroo Guides

• Hispanic boy names with meanings
• boy names that start with L