Names of families?

Why did family names stop where they did? For example why not the Persico or gigante family? Or go back to original like luciano family? Also in your options who's got the best fam nickname. I like the outfit and the arm.

Those names are used to identify each family by Law Enforcement, when the mobsters themselves talk about the families they say my “borgata”, he’s from another NYC “borgata”, and so on.

That’s correct but guys that are in other families actually use LE names .... strange !

I remember reading an article a couple of years ago about how an associate on trial said he had no idea he was “a Colombo” until he was arrested and identified as one by LE. He was just working for his “skipper” and that’s that. Insulation is the mob’s best weapon...when they can maintain it.

They seem to have kept the names of the boss of the family when Joe Valachi identified them all back in the early 60s. Except for the Colombos for some reason.

Apparently, when he became boss, Joey Massino changed the name of the family to the Massino family but I guess it never caught on.

Considering how low key Luciano and his faction were I'm sure they were just fine with the family going by "Genovese". Lucky probably hated his name attached to it in the first place. Wasn't his style.

I don't think that that is correct, Luciano was very flashy, as was Costello, they did nothing to hide who they were. They did a lot of hobnobbing with high society types, much more than Genovese. Genovese was the least flashy of the three, it just happened to be that he was on top when Valachi testified.

What about the Colombo , why’d it change from profaci to Colombo?

I'm not talking about the way in which Luciano and Costello created inroads with mainstream society, I'm talking about whether they preferred to have their name attached to the "thing of theirs". They wanted to be known to important people, but not to be known to the public as heads of a crime organization. I'm sure they were just fine with the press beginning to coin it the Genovese family.

That's true I just think that it is funny that people think that the Genovese family was made up of guys looking to stay in the shadows. Richie the Boot had a huge property with a bunch of statues and a sign saying Godfather's Garden, Joe Adonis was flashy, Willile Morretti wasn't a shrinking violet and neither was Tirgger Mike, Ally Shades, John DiGilio, the list goes on. The general public thinks about the Chin and his crew and Benny Squint and believes that the rest of the family was always like that and they never were, even up to close to the present day.

Most of the names which the families are knows was gave during the Valachi hearing using the name of the borgatas bosses in 1963:

Vito Genovese borgata
Carlo Gambino borgata
Tommy Lucchese borgata
Joseph Bonanno borgata
Joseph Colombo borgata

and so on for the other small families.

Out NY there was some families like Buffalo that was knows with a nickname as the Arm and the Patriarcas as The Office and Chicago as the Outfit and the Detroit Partnership.

Philadelphia Mob insted was called Bruno family and Bruno-Scarfo family and today the Merlino Organization.