Morabito
Last name origin & meaning:
Italian (Sicily): nickname for a teetotaler, Sicilian murabbitu, from Arabic murābịt ‘hermit’, ‘ascetic’.


According to the Genealogy Family Education website, this surname is actually a derivative of the Arabic surname of Murabit meaning hermit. Facebook has a whole group devoted to this surname - Morabito.. more tha a name, a way of life.  with over 170 members and open content.

While searching the Ellis Island Website using my favourite search engine One Step Pages by Stephen Morse
and using various spellings, I discovered the surname is most common in parts of Sicily and Reggio Calabria.

According to the RES website, the surname appears in 79 out of 380 towns in Calabria.