The origins of the Thun family known as the Thun-Hohensteins from onwards have not yet been fully explored, and no fully satisfying answer should be expected in future as a result of the extensive searches in standard genealogical works [1] that have already been performed, not least due to the scarcity of sources from the 11th and 12th centuries.
The best that can be hoped for is to get somewhat closer to the truth as the family's history is placed in the wider historical regional and supra-regional context. The original home of the Thun family, contrary to diverse theories and legends, to be found in the Val di Non, in modern Trentino. The Thun family first appears in the records that have survived to date in the second half of the 12th century, at the entrance to the valley on the right bank upstream of the Noce, where the Rocchetta bottleneck the former Puntelepyn or Ponte Alpino [2] is located on a hill.
This area used to form the parish of Ton, which was composed of the small villages of Vigo [3], Novesino now known as Masi Nosin , Toss, as well as some others. There probably was not a village named Tono. Pinamonti [4] writes that he had personally held a document in his hands, in which a commoner named Toni appears in the year ; however, this document has not survived. Nonetheless, the parish in Vigo is still known as "Ton" today, as has been the case since time immemorial.
On the hill where the Thun family's original family seat, the Santa Margherita Chapel, which the Thuns built when they moved their residence to the hill near Vigo where Castel Thun now stands.
Names of streets and towns still recall the era when the hill on the entrance of the broad Val di Non was still the family seat. The origins of the name "Tono" are similarly uncertain. The records show a variety of different forms of the name, such as Tunno, Tonno, Thunne, and Tunn. Only in the course of the 14th century did the "German version" of Tono, "Thunn," start to appear, which can be explained by contact with German speaking areas and the expansion of the family, principally in central Europe.
