Category:Ruffini

Lists of Ruffini

See below for a list of all of our relatives on this website with the family name Ruffini, Ruffinu or Ruffino.

Note also this list of Ruffini Descendants in America.

Family History

Our branch of the Ruffini came to the United States of America from Ozieri, Sardinia. Before Ozieri, they had come from nearby Nule. But "Ruffini" and its variations are not themselves Sardinian names, and the family presumably came originally from elsewhere.

Oral Legend

According to the family legend, our Ruffini ancestors fled Bourbon France during the Revolution. If this is true, it is obvious that the name’s spelling had to have been changed at some point. I had always assumed that it had been Ruffini or Ruffino before the change, but, unprompted, Barbara said that it had been Ruffin, and that it had been changed to avoid being caught. Luigi Ruffini could not confirm or deny this, but did say that his mother had repeated the story of French origin at later points.

Documentary Evidence

What we have learned from the Nule (Sardinia) records about the life of our ancestor Girolamo Ruffinu, who lived in Sardinia in the 1770s to 1800s, and his father Domenico Ruffino makes the tradition of French Revolutionary origins for the family in Sardinia seem unlikely. Another alternative origin for the family presents itself in the career of Girolamo Ruffini, a Neapolitan painter active in Sardinia in the 1700s. Given the tendency in the Ruffini line for men to be named for their grandfathers, given our ancestor named Geronimo (Girolamo) Ruffinu, and given Nule's relative proximity to the locations holding the work of this painter, the circumstantial case for a relation between our family and the painter seems strong.

Conclusion

We are certainly descended from Domenico Ruffino. If our guesses about his relatives are correct, we may ultimately be descended from Antonio Rufino. For a more detailed discussion of the Sardinian Ruffini, see the article Giulio Laurenzo Ruffini wrote summarizing our research on the subject.