Francesco Cossiga was born in Sassari on 26 July 1928, from a republican and anti-fascist middle-bourgeois family. His parents were Giuseppe Cossiga and Maria "Mariuccia" Zanfarino. He was the second-degree cousin of brothers Enrico and Giovanni Berlinguer (whose parents were Mario Berlinguer and Maria "Mariuccia" Loriga) because their respective maternal grandfathers, Antonio Zanfarino and Giovanni Loriga, were half-brothers on their mother side. Although he was commonly called "Cossìga" , the original pronunciation of the surname is "Còssiga" . His surname in Sardinian and Sassarese means "Corsica", likely pointing to the family's origin.