My mother's family were the (infamous) Calo family who came to London via Amsterdam. The furthest back I am able to trace is a Michael Calo who died in 1779. The family history before that is rather vague. I am unsure whether they were actually Sephardi, or were Italian, and married into the Sephardi community. The only trace of the name Calo that I was able to find in Spain was in Tarazona.The story of their name has come down through the years, and goes something like this (probably much embellished over the years!): Calo is a diminutive used for a much-loved rabbi in Italy, whose students called him Maestro Calo. His real name was Kalonymus. I know there's a huge Kalonymus family/dynasty who seem to have been based in Lucca, but they spread out across Europe, largely to France. Kalonymus is, apparently, a Hellenised version of Shem Tov, and there is speculation that this was a very old family taken into exile from Jerusalem to Rome. Much of this was written down by an elderly member of the family, and I do have files of his typed pages. He seems to think that, in Amsterdam, the family was known as "de Levy Calo", but there is no explanation for this, and none of the London descendants can confirm this. There are many experts here, far more knowledgeable than me. Can anyone shed a glimmer of light on the origins of the Calo family, please?