This year, the Three Hills brand will be featuring set of 60 Maltese surnames in an exercise that involved months of work and research.

Each can will be featuring information about the origins of a particular surname, when it was first documented and an explanation about its coat of arms.

The research was carried out by Joe Borg, a genealogist with over 20 years’ experience in Maltese heraldry, and Simon Mercieca, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, University of Malta, specialising in family name research and genealogy.

The descriptions on the cans were abridged and edited by Mgr Joseph Bezzina, a well-known Maltese historian and national archivist.

The coats of arms for the 60 surnames date back to the early 1800s. These were all hand-painted drawings found in the library of the Agostinian Friars in Rabat. Photography was entrusted to Daniel Cilia.