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Greetings,
We've gathered a lot of information about your proposed name "Athanael Solari d'Aquitaine." Here's a summary of what we found.
Although we couldn't document "Athanael," we were able to find evidence for a similar Italian name, "Attanello." I'll explain all the conclusions we came to.
Your first source for "Athanael" was a drama set in 5th-century Greece. Although the setting of the drama is certainly period, the drama itself isn't. Writers throughout history have made up or mangled names for their "historical" work, and so it's not possible to rely on them for documentation.
You also constructed "Athanael" from "Athanaeus," which you found in the "Dictionary of First Names" by Hanks & Hodges. Unfortunately, Hanks & Hodges is not an extremely reliable source. The "Athanaeus the Athonite" it refers to was actually named "Athanasius the Athonite." He was an 11th-century monk who was named after St. Athanasius of Alexandria, an important Christian figure who lived in the 4th century. We did find that there was a Greek writer named "Athenaeus," but we found no evidence that this name continued to be used in Italy in our period. Some Greek names survived in Byzantine Greece or classical Rome and were adopted into Italian, but most of these names belonged to figures of great significance either in Christianity or classical literature. It is conceivable that the name could have survived in Byzantine Greece or classical Rome, and been adopted in early Italian like some other classical names, but we didn't find any examples of "Athanaeus" outside of ancient Greece and we think that its survival is less plausible than the alternatives we will suggest below.
Even if we could document "Athanaeus" as a medieval name, there's no example to support changing the final "s" to "l" in any language we know of, so "Athanael" still isn't a likely name.
We mentioned St. Athanasius earlier. His name became popular and forms of "Athanasius" were adopted into many languages, especially in Eastern Europe. Of greatest interest to you, we found that the name "Athanasius" was used in the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine culture influenced southern Italy, and the name was adopted into Italian as "Attanasio", with variants including "Atanasio", "Tanasio", and "Attano". The Italian language often forms diminutives of names (like "Jimmy" from "James"), and one of the standard ways to form diminutives in Italian is to replace "-o" with "-ello" (pronounced "at-tah-NELL-o"). Following this pattern, one diminutive of "Attano" is "Attanello". While we do not have an actual example of "Attanello" being used, it fits the standard way in which names were formed and so we feel confident that it's a historically accurate period name. It is particularly likely in southern Italy, in Sicily or the region of Naples.
Because you found a historical example of "Solari," we're sure it's a period name. We were able to find out a little more about its origin. "Solari" derives from a word meaning "a sunny place", and was probably originally used as a local byname (e.g., one which described the place where the person lived) for someone who lived in a particularly sunny spot. The analogous English surname is "Light".
We didn't find any evidence for "Elysium." We don't have any examples in which the name of a place out of Greek mythology was be used as a surname by an Italian at any point in period. Without evidence to the contrary, we must say that "Elysium" is not a period surname.
"d'Aquitaine" is a reasonable surname, but it probably isn't appropriate for your persona. Locative surnames, or surnames derived from places, were given to differentiate people from those around them. An Italian who moved to Aquitaine wouldn't be known as "from Aquitaine;" everyone he met would be from Aquitaine. He would more likely be known as being "from Italy," "from Florence," or "the Italian." Further, foreigners who moved to other countries often found their names translated into the native language (so that Janos, King of Bohemia, is known in France as Jean de Boheme).
If your persona lived in Aquitaine for a while and then returned to Italy, he might have been described by a byname based on his travels. We did find several examples of Italian surnames based on Italian names of foreign regions or adjectives describing nationalities:
We suggest dropping the place-name altogether and using "Attanello Solari," which is a perfectly reasonable Italian name. If you do want to use "of Aquitaine" in your name, some plausible Italian forms would be "d'Aquitania," "Aquitania," and perhaps "Aquitano."
Our sources for information were "Dizionario dei Cognomi Italiani" and "Dizionario dei nomi Italiani," both by Emidio De Felice. Arval d'Espas Nord, Jaelle of Armida, Solveig Throndasdottir, and Pedro de Alcazar contributed to the discussion on your name.
During all this, we haven't talked much about your device. I'll ask for opinions and get back to you on that as well.
In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of St. Gabriel