ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1938 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1938 ************************************ 22 Feb 2000 From: "Judith M. Phillips" Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked our help in selecting an appropriate name for a Renaissance Florentine woman and expressed an interest in the names and in particular. Here is the information we found. During your period of interest Italy consisted of many independent city-states, and there was no standard Italian language. The dialects spoken in different regions varied greatly, and some were not even mutually intelligible. Names that were used in one area were not necessarily used in others; thus we cannot say whether a name used in Venice would also have been used in Florence. Names and naming patterns changed over time as well, so we do not know whether a name used in the13th century was still in use in the 15th century. The given names and are both found in Perugia, a city in what is now central Italy, in the late 13th century [1]. We have no example of either name in Florence two hundred years later, so we cannot recommend either as the best possible re-creation for that period. We did find the feminine name , which may be related to , in Florence in 1427 [2]; this would be a fine choice for your period of interest. is a well-formed patronymic byname. A patronymic byname is a "last name" derived from the given name of the bearer's father. is found as a patronymic in 14th century Venice [3]. (The preposition is commonly used in medieval and renaissance Italian names to denote a patronymic byname, but it is not always present). The surname is most common in the central and eastern parts of northern Italy and in Sicily [4], and we have no example of it in Tuscany, so we doubt that it was common in Renaissance Florence [5]. It might however be a good choice for a recent immigrant from Venice. is found as a family name in Florence in 1427 [6]. It is derived from the word , meaning "wood-lark." Such names usually originate as descriptive bynames, or last names that somehow describe the bearer. While we have no 13th century example, we think that , "the lark," is a plausible byname for that period. It is worth noting that most of the people in our 13th century source are identified by patronymic bynames; if you set your persona in that period you may want to choose a patronymic to use in at least some circumstances. In the Renaissance, either or [7] would be an excellent family name. Even in the 15th century, you still might have used a patronymic on many occasions: Dovizia, daughter of Pietro Calandri, might often have been called or even simply . There is a wealth of information on early 15th century Florentine names available online from the Online Catasto of 1427 found at [http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/catasto/overview.html]. This document is a searchable database of tax information for the city of Florence collected between 1427 and 1429 and contains thousands of names. Indexes of all feminine given names, all family names, and all patronymic bynames (in an article on men's names) are available from [http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/italian.shtml]. In summary, either or would be an excellent name for a woman in Renaissance Florence, while might be appropriate for a Renaissance Florentine woman whose father was from Venice. We cannot rule out for Renaissance Florence, but we cannot recommend it as good historical re-creation. Either or is possible for a woman in northern Italy somewhat earlier, although in neither case do we have an example of the given name and byname in use in the same time and place. We suggest that you consult the Online Catasto of 1427 in your further research. I hope that this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in writing this letter by Maridonna Benvenuti, Talan Gwynek, Arval Benicoeur, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Adelaide de Beaumont, Juliana de Luna, and Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja. For the Academy, Adeliza de Saviniaco 21 February 2000 References: [1] Arval Benicoeur, "Feminine Given Names from Thirteenth Century Perugia" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1997) [URL:http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/arval/perugia/]. [2] Arval Benicoeur, "Feminine Given Names from the Online Catasto of Florence of 1427" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1998) [URL:http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/arval/catasto]. [3] Arval Benicoeur and Talan Gwynek, "Fourteenth Century Venetian Personal Names" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1999) [URL:http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/arval/venice14/]. [4] De Felice, Emidio, _Dizionario dei cognomi italiani_ (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1978). s.n. Aliprandi. [5] We have extensive data from 15th c. Florence [6], and no form of is included. [6] Herlihy, David and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, "Census and Property Survey of Florentine Domains in the Province of Tuscany, 1427-1480", Machine readable data file. Online Catasto of 1427 Version 1.1. Online Florentine Renaissance Resources: Brown University, Providence, R.I., 1996 [URL:http://swansong.stg.brown.edu/projects/catasto/overview.html]. [7] There is no preposition in Italian, but an Italian family name occasionally took the form , "of the X family;" the forms ( is a shortened form of ), , and are found in [8], where it is implied that they are merely illustrative examples. [8] Fucilla, Joseph G., _Our Italian Surnames_ (Evanston, IL: Chandlers' Inc., 1949). p. 15.