Ariana Grande’s Ethnicity and Family Roots

Mother’s side

Her mother, Joan Grande, runs a company that makes communication and alarm equipment for the US Navy.^[1] Joan’s grandparents, Michele Antonio Grande and Filomena Iavenditti, emigrated to the United States from Gildone, a village in the province of Campobasso.^[3] Molise and Abruzzo formed a single region until 1963, which fits Grande’s own description of her roots as partly from Abruzzo.^[4] In 2023 Joan Grande and Ariana’s half-brother Frankie obtained Italian citizenship through this family line.^[3][5]

Joan’s parents were Frank Grande, a veteran born in Brooklyn in 1923, and Marjorie Grande, born D’Amico, whom Ariana’s fans know as Nonna. They married in 1946, and Frank died in Boca Raton in 2014.^[6] Marjorie was born in New York City in 1925. Her parents, Giovanni D’Amico and Filomena “Minnie” Gigante, had both been born in Italy, he in 1880 and she in 1890.^[7][8][9] Filomena was born on January 2, 1890, in San Fele, a mountain village in Basilicata, to Francesco Gigante and Margherita Faggella, as the town’s birth register records. She came to New York as a child in 1898 on the steamship Patria and married Giovanni, who went by John, in New York City in 1911.^[10][11][12] Marjorie met Frank when she was 11. In 2024, at 98, she became the oldest artist ever to appear on the Billboard Hot 100, as a featured artist on Ariana’s song “Ordinary Things”. She died in June 2025 at 99.^[13]

Father’s side

Her father, Edward Butera, owns a graphic design company.^[1] His parents were Anthony V. Butera and Florence Butera, born Citrano. Anthony was born in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1927 and served in the Navy in World War II. He worked for First Fidelity Bank in Newark from 1950 until 1991 and retired as senior vice president of its municipal bond department. He died in 2001.^[14] Florence grew up in Newark and spent most of her life in nearby Maplewood. When she died in 2019, her obituary named Edward, of Boca Raton, as her son and Ariana as one of her grandchildren.^[15]

The family’s link to Sicily runs through both of Anthony’s parents. His mother, Mary “Marie” Passalacqua, was born in 1901 in Paceco, a town next to Trapani on the western tip of the island.^[16] His father, Charles Antonio Butera, was born in Morristown in 1899 to Antonio Butera.^[17][18] In a passport application from 1906, Antonio gave his birthplace as Menfi, a town in the province of Agrigento on Sicily’s southwest coast, and his birthday as March 13, 1864. He had sailed from Le Havre in December 1890, became a US citizen in Brooklyn in 1896 and worked as a confectioner in Morristown.^[19] The Italian film magazine Cinefilos also describes Edward Butera as being of Sicilian descent.^[2] Where Florence’s family has its roots is not documented in the sources we checked.

“Greek and North African”

In April 2014 Grande wrote on Twitter that she had just found out her grandparents were “heavily greek and part north african”. She added that she had thought she was Italian and ended the post with “my whole life is a lie”.^[20] When a fan asked whether she was Italian at all, she replied “yes hahaha the chart says Greece/Italy”. She said she had just found it funny and assumed that the North African part was Moroccan or Tunisian.^[21] She did not say what kind of chart it was or which grandparents she meant. Both posts are no longer online and survive in the Internet Archive.