Pete Buttigieg’s father was originally from Malta. His name was Dr. Joseph Anthony Buttigieg (1947-2019), and he was a Professor of English. He became a US citizen in 1979, though he was born a citizen of the British colony of Malta, and then a Maltese citizen when it gained independence. The Buttigieg family is one of the oldest of Maltese families, having an unbroken recorded male line of descent for over a thousand years.
As mentioned at the end of the article on his mother’s ancestry the name Buttigieg translates as “owner of chickens” or, but it can also be translated as “chicken on a barrel”. I mentioned a coat of arms as well last time. It’s a perfect example of a heraldic pun. Whether the original family name really was actually meant to refer to a chicken on a barrel or evolved from the similar sounding name is uncertain but it has been used by the family since medieval times. I found three variations of the coat of arms for the family, and have yet to determine with certainty which one has been inherited by Pete Buttigieg (I favour the middle one).
Let’s see how far back the family can be traced. From information in the Maltese National Archives and various online genealogies I’ve found that there is a continuous father-to-son bloodline for the family that probably goes back to 850 AD.
Silvestrino Buttigieg’s great-grandfather, Ansaldinu Buttigieg (b.1390), is listed as a Nobile, a title similar to the feudal lords of the manor in medieval England. Owners of these titles held great influence in the government of the Malta for several generations.
The Buttigieg’s title of Nobile was first held by Ansaldinu’s great-great-great-grandfather Antonio bin Buttigieg. You may have noticed a slight change to the surname, the “bin”, which indicates that Antonio belonged to a Muslim family. From unverified information this brings an intriguing element into Pete Buttigieg’s ancestry, because this Antonio is said to have been the son of a prince of the Muslim Kalbid dynasty.
The Kalbids were an Arab family who settled in the Maghreb, the region in North Africa between present day Morocco and Egypt. Arabs from the Maghreb captured Malta and Sicily from the Byzantine Empire in the 9th century, and al-Hasan al-Kalbi, the founder of the Kalbid dynasty and Pete Buttigieg’s direct male ancestor, because the Emir of Sicily and Malta in 947. The throne of Sicily-Malta separated in 1053 and the last Emir of Malta, Jafar III, Pete Buttigieg’s ancestral cousin, was deposed in 1240.
The Buttigiegs descend from the junior Kalbid line down to Prince Muhammad Kalbid, Hakim (i.e. governor) of Catania. Between 1000 and 1150 different lines of Pete’s ancestral Kalbid cousins were Kings of Badajoz, Majorca and Segura, and Emirs of Messina, Agrigento and Castrogiovanni.
The Kalbids were deposed by Norman invaders from Italy, led by Roger I de Hauteville (c.1031-1101), Count of Sicily. Malta thus became a part of the county of Sicily. Many Muslim family were permitted to remain and some converted to Christianity, including some of the Kalbid princes.
Pete Buttigieg’s father is also descended from the Hauteville dynasty. The bloodline goes down into the royal family of Aragon who were subsequent conquerors of Malta and Sicily. Princess Leonor de Aragona-Sicilie (c.1346-after 1369) was the daughter of Prince Giovanni, Duke of Athens and Regent of Sicily-Malta (son of King Federigo II of Sicily). Through her Pete Buttigieg acquires the bloodline from Roger de Hauteville.
Eventually this Hauteville and Aragon bloodline merged with the Kalbid bloodline in 1664 with the marriage of Giuseppe Buttigieg and the Aragon descendant Domenica Galea.
Five generations later another Giuseppe Buttigieg married Maria Micalief, a member of one of the many other influential Maltese families in Pete’s ancestry. If we follow Maria’s line back a few generations we find several lines of descent from a Spanish soldier who arrived in Malta called Jofre Albano de Borja. If that name sounds familiar it’s because his brother was great-grandfather to the notorious Italian Borgias and Pope Alexander VI.
The Maltese Borjas changed their name to Borg, and one of Pete’s distant cousins from this family was George Borg Olivier (1911-1980), who was twice Prime Minister of Malta. With Malta being a small nation it is not surprising that a very high proportion of people on the Maltese islands are interrelated or are distant cousins, more so than in the USA where there are millions of people. So, its also no surprise to learn that as well and George Borg Olivier and Anton Buttigieg (both above-mentioned) Pete Buttigieg is related by blood to most of the Presidents, Prime Ministers and medieval rulers of Malta.
Good evening, my grandmother was a French woman from Algeria and Tunisia of Maltese origin. I have ancestors named BUTTIGIEG, you are referring to the Kalbids. The only source we have of Kalbids is the Malta genealogy site, which has a bad reputation in the genealogical community. Charles Vassalo-Said is said to have tampered with lineages to make people believe in the veracity of his title of Prince Vassalo-Said, including the BUTTIGIES, CAMILLERI, XUEREB lineages... Do you have other sources?
ReplyDeleteSincerely Jérémie
I mentioned that the link to the Kalbids was unverified. Reading the article again I think I could have reiterated the point in several other places. I am aware of the Maltese Genealogy website and its reputation, and have only used it to provide hints as to where else to look. The general DNA of the Maltese population contains a big piece from the same racial group as the Kalbids, so being descended from them is not improbable. For the Buttigieg family specifically, I searched through many histories of Malta and genealogies of Maltese families. The information made me believe that the family were important enough at that time to have significant positions during the Kalbid period that suggested they could have married into junior lines of the ruling dynasty. This was common throughout Europe in Medieval times for families who wanted to climb further up the ladder of power, even if it led nowhere. I hope I wasn’t being too presumptuous in including it in my post.
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