I find all this speculation exhausting.

Occam’s Razor, Karl – are the thousands of Maltese and Sicilian people called Caruana more likely to be descended from rather a large number of caravan-leaders who somehow ended up in this part of the world (inexplicably, given that it was never on a caravan route for geographic reasons), or are they more likely to be descended from settlers from Kairouan, which is EXACTLY where the so-called ‘Arabs’ who settled in Sicily and later Malta originated?

If caravan-drivers were really the origin, there would be people called Caruana all over, but they are restricted to Malta and Sicily.

Kairouan was THE major city of the Arab world – it was, in fact, the biggest metropolis closest to Malta at that time, just next door in Tunisia.

As for Muscat, the mistake you make is to think in terms of an ‘Arabic surname’ or a surname of Arabic origin. No – that’s not it. It’s a surname coined in this part of the Mediterranean to describe a family/families who had settled round these parts after arriving from Muscat.

So much for ‘Masqati’. It would never have been that. It’s a straight Muscat just like it’s a straight Toledo, Catania, or Messina.

Come off it.

And that’s quite apart from the fact that Malta, unlike say Britain, has a very restricted historic tradition of surnames derived from trades.

We use them as a ‘laqam’, yes, but they never became actual surnames. Gianni l-Landier and Joey il-Mastrudaxxa. But are Landier and Mastrudaxxa surnames? No, they are not.

Bone/Bona in Algeria was Maltese Central even until the 19th century.

And the claim that Tabone is an origin nisba is completely false. It derives from the world tabuna, which is a kind of fire pit. This would make it an occupational nisba related to bakery or blacksmith, probably.

I’m sorry to say, Daphne, but as much as I have respect for you, “if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it generally is a duck” is a very unsophisticated way of dealing with something as complex as delicate as language and etymology. My area of expertise and research is in early Medieval, so I am well aware of the Silk Road and trading routes in the Mediterranean.

There is absolutely nothing romantic in not knowing the origin of a name. Just because there is a linguistic similarity, and even perceived historical probability, for the origin of a name, the facts are usually not as straightforward. By your reasoning, Malta’s name must derive from the lush fields of malt found on the island, because if it looks like malt, then it much be linked to malt, which is preposterous.

It is true that many Maltese surnames are of the origin nisba, but many others are in fact of the occupational nisba. These would have ended in -i in the original Arabic, and later latinised to -a (which already throws the idea of Muscat being an origin nisba out of the window, or at least cast a legitimate doubt on it, as that would have probably been Masqati > Muscata/Muscati). A perfect example is one surname you did mention, which is Caruana. The idea that it is derived from Kairouan is one proposed theory that makes it a surname of origin nisba. However, there is another theory that proposed it being of an occupational nisba, meaning “a man who owns/manages a caravan”, and would derive for the Arabic karwan, itself derived from Persian (Silk Road influences coming in there). The English word caravan derives from the same origin, although via French. So as you can see, it is not as simple as “if it looks like a duck”.

Many Maltese surnames are nothing more than ‘place of origin’ names and it is absolutely no coincidence that they are all the names of ports or merchant cities in and around the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Near East and the Middle East, with a few exceptions for which the reasons are obvious, like Spanish city-names which indicate Jews moving about in the diaspora (Galizia, Toledo).

Muscat is just another one, and there is absolutely no need to go hunting around for some more romantic or ‘European’ origin. Why are there so many Caruanas in Sicily and Malta, and why are they only Sicilian and Maltese? Because they originally came from Kairouan.

Muscat was a major port on the Silk Route into the Mediterranean. Malta was a major trading post in the southern Mediterreanean. People moved between trading posts and ports on the major trade routes. There is really no need to romanticise the matter or look further than that.

Ask yourself why there are no Maltese ‘place of origin’ names that are, say, derived from London, or Stockholm or Helsinki or Glasgow. They are all, but all, linked to cities with which Malta was somehow linked on trade routes, or where there were largish colonies of Maltese, like Bona/Bone in Algeria.