Mauro

Mauro is the Italian form of the Latin Maurus, which meant a Moor, a native of Mauretania in north-west Africa, and by extension dark-skinned. Saint Maurus, a young disciple of Saint Benedict of Nursia, is remembered in Benedictine tradition for walking on water to rescue his companion Placid, and the French Benedictine congregation of Saint Maur took his name. The same Latin root produced Maurice through the derivative Mauritius. Maur is the French and Catalan form, and Mauri is a Finnish and Spanish variant.