The Alaimo family of Ustica ranks 38th in comparison to the size of all Ustican families. They are a moderately-sized family meaning that they fall in the range of 200 to 400 family members as counted from the family charts at the Ustica Genealogy Homepage. As such, most may not be aware that they established a presence in New Orleans and in California that persists to this day. In fact, Dominick Alaimo and his father Frank were past presidents of the San Bartolomeo Society of New Orleans.

The Alaimo family were not among the very first immigrants to Ustica in the 1760s. They show up in the Ustica church records some 20 years later in 1782 with the marriage of Francesco Alaimo and Caterina Megna, and from this couple descend all of the Alaimo family of Ustica.

The Alaimo family in Lipari is quite a different story. They are one of the larger families of Lipari with a solid presence in the very earliest of Lipari church records in the late 1500s. The variations in the spelling of the surname are off the charts (nearly 30!) primarily due to the pairing or substitution of the letter i with the letter j - a practice not found in modern Italian. The most prevalent variation is actually DiLaimo. Still, the modern spelling Alaimo is found in Lipari records as early 1685.

The lineage of our Ustican progenitor, Francesco Alaimo, traces back five more generations to Pietro Alaimo who married Caterina Rovito on November 9, 1608 in Lipari. There the trail runs cold as it becomes unclear if he is the son or grandson of the very earliest identifiable Alaimo family, that of Florio Alaimo and Beatrice Vicensorio.

The 1608 Lipari marriage record of "Petrus di Laijmo et Catarinella Ruvito". It is frustrating that the earliest Lipari marriages from 1594 through 1645 rarely contain parent names. Not to mention the handwriting. Yikes!