Famous people named Tedesco

Music and the stage

The best-known Tedesco in music history is Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968), a Florentine composer from a Jewish family who left Italy after the 1938 racial laws and became one of Hollywood's busiest film composers and teachers. His contemporary Manoah Leide-Tedesco (1895–1982) worked as a composer and conductor.

• Tommy Tedesco (1930–1997), one of the most recorded studio guitarists in American popular music.
• Sergio Tedesco (1928–2012), Italian actor, voice actor and tenor, and his daughter Paola Tedesco (born 1952), an actress.

Sport

• Domenico Tedesco (born 1985), born in Calabria and raised in Germany, a football manager who coached Schalke and the Belgian national team.
• Giovanni Tedesco (born 1972) and his brother Giacomo Tedesco (born 1976), Italian footballers.
• James Tedesco (born 1993), Australian-Italian rugby league full-back.

A name given to outsiders

Tedesco literally means "German", and the label was sometimes given to German-speaking artists working in Italy rather than inherited. The Austrian painter Johann Paul Schor (1616–1674), who decorated Roman palaces and churches in the Baroque era, was known in Rome as Giovanni Paolo Tedesco. Today's bearers are spread across the Americas too: Elena Tedesco (born 1991) was Nuestra Belleza El Salvador in 2009, and Margaret Tedesco was an American curator, dancer and visual artist.

Public life

Juan Carlos Tedesco (1944–2017) served as Argentina's Minister of Education, and Jane Tedesco (1906–1997) was an American politician. The variant spellings have their own figures: archbishop Settimio Todisco and boxer Salvatore Todisco in Italy, and New York politician Jim Tedisco.

These people are not one family. A Tedesco ancestor was simply someone Italians identified with the German lands, and the name arose in many places, including among Italian Jewish families of German origin. To understand the name itself, start with our Tedesco coat of arms and surname meaning page, and for research tips see Tedesco family history.