Italian: nickname from caruso ‘close-cropped’ (Latin
cariosus ‘decayed’, also ‘smooth’, ‘bald’). This word was also
used in the more general sense ‘boy’, ‘lad’, since in the Middle Ages
young men of fashion sometimes wore their hair much shorter than was
the prevailing style. In the Girgenti area of Sicily the term was a
metonymic occupational name for a worker in the sulfur pits, since
such workers were required to wear their hair short.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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