Italian surnames are the most difficult of all european names to research with total accuracy. This because firstly, hereditary surnames were slow to develop, and secondly those that did were flexible in their spelling, sometimes only retaining one or two letters from the original base-form. In this case however, although the original meaning is open to conjecture, we have been able to establish a definitive 18th Century recording. The original name is probably habitational and developed from either the Roman Province of Lo-Sasso, or it means literally "one who lived by a rocky place", the development being from the Latin Saxum, a rock. The surname spelling is almost certainly a patronymic translating as "son of Rock", the surname is also found spelt as Sassio and Sassia. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Giacomo Antonio Sazio, which was dated July 26th 1754, Baptised at Milano, Italy, during the reign of King Francis "Holy Roman Emperor", 1745 - 1765. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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