Southern Italian name from Latin 'agnellus' meaning 'lamb,' associated with Sant'Agnello.
Aniello is a southern Italian given name, particularly associated with Naples and the Campania region, that derives from the Latin *Agnellus*, a diminutive of *Agnus* meaning 'lamb.' The lamb's symbolism in Christian tradition—purity, sacrifice, the Agnus Dei of the Mass—made *Agnellus* a natural baptismal name in medieval Christendom, and the Neapolitan dialect transformed it through characteristic sound shifts into the warm, distinctly local Aniello. It remains to this day a name heard almost exclusively among Neapolitan families and their descendants in the diaspora.
The name's most dramatic historical moment came in 1647, when Tommaso Aniello—known universally as Masaniello—led a spectacular popular uprising in Naples against Spanish Habsburg taxation. A fisherman by trade, Masaniello became for nine delirious days the effective ruler of Naples before being assassinated by those who had initially supported him. His story captured European imaginations for centuries; Daniel Auber's 1828 opera *La Muette de Portici*, based on Masaniello's revolt, was so incendiary that its Brussels performance in 1830 reportedly triggered the Belgian Revolution.
Through Masaniello, the name became permanently associated with the fierce, volatile spirit of Neapolitan popular identity. In contemporary use, Aniello is rare even within Italy, largely confined to families maintaining conscious ties to Neapolitan tradition. It carries tremendous local pride—a name that insists on its regional roots rather than dissolving into the more internationally legible Angelo or Antonio. For the Italian-American families who still use it, particularly in communities with Campanian heritage in New York and New Jersey, Aniello is an act of cultural memory.