As you all know by reading my blog, my last name is Speziale. I’ve been researching my last name Speziale for years to find out its meaning. Today I stumbled upon a new Wikipedia Speziale page. I had to translate the Speziale page to english, because naturally, it was written in Italian – Italy being the origin of the Speziale last name.

The Wikipedia article describes Speziale: “The chemist in the Middle Ages was the one who took care of the preparation of medicines, usually had a shop called pharmacy, within which the activities carried out also for the sale of spices and medicinal herbs.”

So my ancestors were presumably the modern-day equivalent to pharmacists and chemists. Interesting. Check out the full Speziale Wikipedia article