Aside from the nobility, most Italians did not have family names until the late middle ages when it became necessary that everyone have a surname.  Therefore, two families sharing the same name are not necessarily related.   Instead their ancestors could have both chosen the same name independently.   Nevertheless, I would expect anyone named Firrantello is probably related somehow because it is simply not a common name.  The first "i" is a mark of its Sicilian origin.  You will find the name Ferrantello and Ferrantelli to be more common in the rest of Italy.

What does the name mean?  Here are two possible sources.   First, that it is derived from a given name, Ferrante a version of Ferdinand. The second explaination is that it is derived from the Sicilian word firraro (ferraro in Italian), meaning a horse-shoer or blacksmith.

A database which charts name distribution in Italy shows that the name Firrantello is not a common one.  There are no Firrantellos in Sciara and probably weren't any others when Ignazio lived there.  Tracing my Firrantello ancestors leads to another neighboring town, Caccamo, which is the birthplace of Ignazio's grandfather, Ignazio.  Today there are 16 Firrantellos listed in the phone directory for Caccamo.  To see a chart of the distribution of the name Firrantello in Italy click here.  Notice there is only one occurance of the name in outside of Sicily. This is a family that migrated from Caccamo to Tuscany.

In the United States, there are two Firrantello families.  One is the subject of this webpage you are reading.  The other originated in Caccamo and settled in Chicago Heights, IL.  When Larry Firrantello and his wife Olga lived in Chicago in the early 1950s they had significant contact with this family, although the two Firrantello families are now long out of touch.  They always assumed there was no connection, but my research points to a possible connection many generations back.
 

One of the things that makes Italian genealogy easy is the tradition of given names.  The first son is named after the paternal grandfather, the second son after the maternal grandfather.  The same pattern is used with the daughters.  Both Ignazio and Maria were named after their grandparents.  Their children, Frank, Tom, Anna Maria and Mary were named for their grandparents.  Loreto (Larry) was named after Loreto Castiglia, Ignazio's biological father.

This can lead to confusion since cousins would then have the same names.  Niccolo Castiglia can count seven of his descendants with the same name.  Loreto Firrantello and Loreto Castiglia were both raised by Ignazio and Maria which is why Loreto Firrantello was called "Babe".  Both men eventually took the name Larry.