Yes, it stems from Latin. See Latin's case declension tables [0]

In Spanish and Portugese, -a is a feminine suffix and -o is masculine; that's where we get Patricio vs Patricia.

There are very few female names that end with -o and very few male names that end with -a in Spanish.

Another example is -ine in Joseph/Josephine. -ine/-ino/-in is a feminizing suffix in German and a diminutive in Spanish and French, that's why it's a femenine suffix in names. In English we have hero vs heroine.

[0]: https://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/case-endings-five-de...

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SamBam an hour ago | parent | next [-]

There are a few common Italian male names end in -a, though.

Andrea, Luca, Nicola are the most common.

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colechristensen an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Aren't most of these cases of dropping the final s and maybe a vowel from a latin names instead of adding a diminutive a?

Andreas Lucas Nicolas, etc. (perhaps with different spelling in Latin)

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epolanski an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

All masculine names in Italian that end with -a come from Jews, old testament, with the exceptions of Enea and Nicola.

	▲	Xirdus 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		All three examples in GP are ancient Greek origin.

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weinzierl an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

	▲	embedding-shape an hour ago \| parent [-]
		He's talking about Spanish, not Italian, a different language? Lots of nicknames in Spanish end with an A though, Juanma and Joserra, basically putting together Juan Manuel and Jose Ramon.