Cosa Nostra is the traditional name given to the Mafia, which is Italian/Sicilian for "Our Thing", originally by the press in Italy, as they needed a name to seperate the Mafia form other organized crime organizations in Italy. It is widely used in the U.S. as a formal term for the Mafia. The Mafia themselves do not use any name for their organization as they do not consider it necessary (they use the term families instead). Cosa Nostra was first brought about in the United states by former soldati in the real life Genovese crime family turned world's most famous super-grass, Joseph Valachi, in his testimony before Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan in October 1963 where he told of the inner-most workings of the mafia.
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