New Orleans is a city where one of the highest concentrations of Sicilians of all the United States, originating in majority from the provinces of Palermo, Trapani and Agrigento has always lived there.
The story and the news of this city is in fact studded with an infinite number of Sicilian surnames, such as Miceli, Bondì, Montalbano, Lentini, Barone, Cristina, Cacioppo, Tortorici, Russo, Maggiore, Giardina, Di Maggio, Bonura, Cammarata, Cangemi, Provenzano, Costa, Pizzuto, Pisciotta, Pecoraro, Matranga, Zito, Gennaro, Monteleone, Giammalva, Liberto, Palmisano, Margiotta, Schirò, Guarino, Lo Jacono…. and we could go on copying entirely all surnames contained in the phone books of half Sicily.
The explanation of this phenomenon can be found in reading a rare book, “Voyage from Palermo to New Orleans”, a true and real diary written in 1897 by Alfonso LoMonaco, a physician on board of the ship “Montebello”, that around last century’s end was connecting directly Palermo to New Orleans, assuring with regularity the promiscuous transportation of passengers and goods, above all citrus fruits, imitating the “Royal Mail Line” of brothers Giuseppe and Pietro Torre, sons of the officer commanding the harbor of Palermo who, having discovered that New Orleans was a very good port of entry for the distribution of these goods in all the Mississippi Valley, had become the main importers.

The “Montebello” was a merchant steamship of remarkable dimensions for that time (she measured 96 meters in length while the central part was 14 meters wide, and in her holds of stem and stern could receive more than a thousand of emigrants, using a system of berths mountable according to needs), in 25 days of sailing she carried the citrus fruits and the Sicilians emigrants in New Orleans and there she loaded cotton bundles for the return voyage to Sicily.A great quantity of this cotton arrived in Palermo was later transferred by sea or by train to Genoa where a certain cloth was  woven……The word “jeans"  by which is called the characteristic cloth of the American pants means “of “ Genoa (that is “Gena” or “Zena” in Genoese dialect), changing the “G” in “J”, making the metathesis “na” “an” and adding the “s” of the possessive case, here it comes out the word “jeans”.