Francesco Carrone, also known as "Buzzy" or "Buzz", was an Italian-American Gambino crime family associate (1938 - 1975 Walpole, Massachusetts). He was a close friend of Thomas Agro and Peter Calabrese.Born in the Little Italy section of Manhattan, Carrone was nickamed "Buzz" because of his violent temper. He joined the Gambino family as an associate, working under caporegime Thomas Agro, and later Carmine Fatico, in the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club crew. He was involved in bank robbery and hijacking as a "stick up man". Carrone also trafficked small shipments of cocaine, marijuana and Quaaludes in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
His right eye was gouged or shot out, severing nerve endings and paralyzing facial muscles and giving the impression that half of his face was smiling. It is unclear how or who was responsible for Carrone losing his eye. As a result of the injury, he suffered from depth perception issues in the years following his accident. Carrone suffered from narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. After his disfigurement, Carrone's condition was made worse by a severe case of posttraumatic stress disorder. wikipedia

Frank "Punchy" Illiano (1928 – January 6, 2014) was a Brooklyn capo with the Genovese crime family. During the 1960s and 1970s, he served as a top lieutenant to the Gallo brothers in their two wars with the Colombo crime family leadership.Illiano began his criminal career as a member of the Gallo crew in the Profaci crime family, later known as the Colombo family. Illiano earned the nickname "Punchy" as a result of a short boxing career. His capo was "Crazy Joey" Gallo, who would become infamous for his feuds with the Profaci family bosses. wikipedia

Salvatore Maceo, also known as Sam Maceo, was a businessman, community leader, and organized crime boss in Galveston, Texas in the United States. Because of his efforts, Galveston Island became a nationally known resort town during the early and mid 20th century, a period known as Galveston's Open Era. He and his brother, both Sicilian immigrants, owned numerous restaurant and casino venues including the now-vanished Hollywood Dinner Club and the Balinese Room. Sometimes known as the "Velvet Glove," Sam's smooth style and ability to influence people were legendary. He was able to wield influence comparable to an elected official and he held relationships with celebrities and politicians throughout Texas and the United States.During his lifetime he and his island home were known nationwide.

Vincent "Vinny Ocean" Palermo (born June 4, 1944) is a former Italian--American mobster who was de facto boss of the New Jersey DeCavalcante crime family before becoming a government witness. Fictional mob boss Tony Soprano, the protagonist of the HBO series The Sopranos, is said to be based upon Palermo.Palermo was raised in a traditional Italian family in Brooklyn, New York. He has five sisters, including Claire and Nancy, and one brother. His father was an Italian immigrant who moved to New York when he was a teenager. Palermo came from a close-knit family, and was said to have lived a harmonious lifestyle. He was an altar boy during adolescence. When Palermo was sixteen, his father died, which forced him to leave school and work two jobs to help support his family, as his mother was a bedridden asthmatic. In his earlier years, Palermo worked at a wholesale fish business in the Fulton Fish Market, where he earned the nickname "Vinny Ocean".

Benedetto Santapaola (born June 4, 1938), better known as Nitto is a prominent mafioso from Catania, the main city and industrial centre on Sicily's east coast. His nickname is il cacciatore (the hunter), because of his passion for shooting game. He is currently in jail serving several life sentences.Nitto Santapaola was born in the degraded neighbourhood of San Cristoforo, in Catania, into a poor family together with his brothers Salvatore, Antonino, Natale and numerous cousins, such as the Ferrera clan, the Ercolano clan and the Romeo clan, all members or associates of Cosa Nostra, and the future nucleus of the Santapaola-Ercolano Mafia family.wikipedia

Arthur Simon Flegenheimer was born into a Jewish family of German immigrants in New York City on August 6, 1902, the Feast of the Transfiguration. Early in his life his father abandoned the family, and life was harsh for Arthur, his mother and his younger sister. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade to help support the family. He quickly fell into a life of crime and by age 18 was serving a prison sentence. He was paroled on December 8, 1920, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Going to work for Schultz Trucking, he swiftly returned to crime. Among his gangland colleagues he adopted the nom de crime of Dutch Schultz. Gangster Joey Noe hired him in 1928 to work as a bouncer at a small speakeasy, Hub Social Group. Impressed by his brutality and ruthlessness, Noe took Schultz into partnership and soon he became wealthy owning with Noe a chain of speakeasies. The Noe-Schultz gang quickly became a power in Manhattan, the sole non-Italian gang to rival the five Italian crime organizations that would later merge as the founding five families of the American Mafia.

The expansion into the upper west side of Manhattan, brought Noe and Schultz into conflict with Irish-American gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond. War breaking out between the gangs, Joey Noe was gunned down and died on November 21, 1928. Schultz was crushed by the loss of his friend and mentor.

Cesare "The Tall Guy" Bonventre (January 1, 1951 – April 16, 1984) was a Sicilian mobster and caporegime for the New York City Bonanno crime family. Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Bonventre was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. During the 1960s, the New York crime families imported young Sicilian men from Sicily to the United States to work as drug traffickers and hitmen. American mobsters soon derisively dubbed the Sicilians "Zips" due to their fast speech. Bonanno boss Carmine Galante brought Bonventre to New York to be his bodyguard. Bonventre soon became the unofficial underboss of the Bonanno family Sicilians. Bonventre's uncle was John Bonventre, a former Bonanno underboss. Bonventre was also a cousin of the first family boss Joseph Bonanno and Bonanno mobster Baldassare "Baldo" Amato. In 1979 Cesare and Baldassare were arrested for carrying illegal firearms in their car after being stopped by police at the Green Acres Mallin Valley Stream, New York shortly before the execution of Carmine Galante. In April 1981 they were convicted and after serving two months. Ralph Blumenthal wrote in Last Days of the Sicilians: The FBI's War Against the Mafia that Cesare identified himself to law enforcement as "a pizza man from Brooklyn".
He was a regular habituate of his cousin Baldassare Amato's deli run by his family located at Second Avenue and Eighty-fourth Street in Yorkville, New York. The deli had burned down not long before January 1984 but in its place the Amato family built an apartment building with a sleek Italian cafe and restaurant called Biffi. Bonventre's moniker was "The Tall Guy" because he stood close to six feet nine tall. Lean and handsome, Bonventre frequented clubs such as The Toyland Social Cluband the Knickerbocker Avenue area with other Sicilian mobsters.wikipedia

Giovanni Brusca (born 20 February 1957 in San Giuseppe Jato) is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia. He murdered the anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone in 1992 and once stated that he had committed between 100 and 200 murders but was unable to remember the exact number. He was sentenced to life in prison in absentia, captured in 1996 and started to cooperate with the authorities.
A pudgy, bearded and unkempt mafioso, Brusca was known in Mafia circles as "U' Verru" (in Sicilian) or Il Porco or Il Maiale, (In Italian: The Pig, The Swine) or "lo scannacristiani" (people-slayer; in Italian dialects the word "christians" often stands for "human beings"). Tommaso Buscetta, the Mafia turncoat who had cooperated with Falcone’s investigations, remembered Giovanni Brusca as "a wild stallion but a great leader. wikipedia

Michele Zaza (Italian pronunciation: [miˈkɛːle ˈdzaddza]; Procida, April 10, 1945 – Rome, July 18, 1994) was a member of the Camorra criminal organisation who was also initiated in the Sicilian Mafia. He headed the Zaza-Mazzarella clan in Naples. Zaza was known as ’O Pazzo (the madman) due to his outspoken and implausible public statements. He was one of the first Camorristi to emerge as a powerful organiser of the cigarette contraband industry in the 1960s and 1970s. A son of a fisherman from Procida (the smallest of the three islands in the Gulf of Naples) he grew up in the poor neighbourhood Portici in Naples. The second of three brothers, Zaza had a troubled youth with involvement in burglaries, fighting, and even attempted murder.[1] His had his first encounter with the law in 1961 when he was arrested for being involved in a street fight.[2][3] In the 1960s, he became the leader of a successful cigarette smuggling group through the port of Naples besides the other predominant group, the Maisto clan. With his relatives, the Mazzarella family, he controlled the zones from San Giovanni a Teduccio to Santa Lucia.[1]
By 1974 there was evidence that he had risen in the criminal underworld when he was arrested with important Mafiosi like Gerlando Alberti, Stefano Bontade and Rosario Riccobono. Soon after that he was arrested in Palermo with Mafia boss Alfredo Bono for illegal possession of firearms.[4] Zaza was an extravagant and prolific cigarette smuggler. He once described his activities during questioning by an investigating magistrate: “First I’d sell five cases of Philip Morris, then ten, then a thousand, then three thousand, and I bought myself six or seven ships that you took away from me… I used to load fifty thousand cases a month… I could load a hundred thousand cases, US$10 million on thrust; all I had to do was make a phone call… I’d buy US$24 million worth of Philip Morris in three months. My lawyer will show you the receipts. I’m proud of that - US$24 million!” wikipedia

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/26/6232...-and-the-nicknames-of-american-mobsters?

'Cadillac Frank,' 'Ice Pick Willie,' And The Nicknames Of American Mobsters

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Step back in time to 1950s Havana with a new tour from the Mob Museum

From Vinnie Aspirins to Smoked Thighs: How mobsters get their nicknames and why they need them

http://nationalpost.com/wcm/68b2e694-1115-4921-9d88-448e81176b6d