ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3305 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3305 ************************************ 6 Dec 2007 From: Adelaide de Beaumont Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if the name is suitable for a Corsican man living between 1530 and 1580. If not, you asked our help in choosing a similar-sounding name. Here is the information we have found. First, we'd like to apologize for the time this report has taken. We hope the information is still useful to you. We'll start with some background information about Italian languages and then discuss your name elements. Italy during the 16th century did not have a single standard language. It was home to various dialects, and it was not until the 19th century that standard modern Italian was adopted throughout the country. Even today, very distinct dialects of Italian remain in common use. The dialects of medieval Italian can be grouped into three main families: northern, central, and southern. Though Genoa, which controlled Corsica throughout most of the medieval period, speaks a northern dialect, the dialect which seems to have had the greatest influence on the language of Corsica was that of Tuscany [1, 2, 3]. Tuscan is most similar to central dialects. Unfortunately, we don't believe is a likely given name for your period and culture. The Latin word 'raven' has a complex history of pronunciation. The letter was pronounced like a in Classical Latin; in Late Latin, however, it became a voiced bilabial fricative, as used in Spanish 'wolf' and 'grape'. It is the sound made by positioning your lips to say a \b\, but relaxing them slightly so that the air escapes (this sound does not occur in English). At this point and were both possible spellings for this sound, and people did make the corresponding spelling errors [4]. Consequently, the word entered various Romance languages spelled both as and . Our latest example of a name based on the Latin is a man named recorded in Florence in 1441 [5]. We have no 16th c. examples of a given name beginning either or , though some forms survive as surnames, like [6]. You found the name in a collection of names from 15th c. Pavia and Ferrara in the northern dialect region; it is a diminutive of , an Italian borrowing of the Germanic name . We would expect the likely form of this diminutive in the Tuscan dialect to be , as we find recorded in Florence in 1427 [7]. You mentioned the possibility of using a name like to identify you as a Corsican. In our experience, bynames identifying a person as from a large area tend to be used only when a person has left that area. For example, you mentioned the Corsican hero known as . Apparently he was known as 'the Corsican' only after he left Corsica for France; it appears that in Corsica he was known as , Bastelica being the name of the town where he was born [8]. We don't believe a man living on Corsica would have a byname like , though he might be known by a more specific locative, such as the name of a town. On the other hand, was a popular given name in Central Italy [5, 7]. It is a shortened form of the names 'succor, help' and 'good succor, good help'[9]. is a fine choice for your given name, though it would not necessarily identify you as Corsican. You also mentioned the possibility of choosing two given names, the first beginning with and the second beginning with , from which you intended to create the nickname . We have never seen a nickname coined in this way in any pre-1600 culture and we strongly recommend you choose a name you actually intend to use [10, 11]. We have not found or , which you said you made up. The most common byname usage of the Italian preposition is to form a patronymic, or byname based on your father's name; would indicate that was your father's name. We have found the family name in your period, but the family lived in Lombardy, in the northern dialect region [17, 18]. There are quite a few possibilities for a byname beginning with , though. One choice is , an occupational byname for a smith; we find it recorded in Milan between 1510 and 1530 [14, 15]. It would be an excellent choice for your byname. Other possibilities include [5, 6, 7, 10, 16]: da Ferrara 'from Ferrara' de Ferro (di) Fenso (di) Feo (di) Ferrando (di) Ferrante (di) Ferrino (di) Ferro Fenci Ferranti Ferrini Fini The names preceded by (di) appear in record as given names. Using the byname , for example, would mean that your father was named . Literal patronymics were much rarer than inherited family names like by the 16th century. We hope that this letter has been useful to you. Please don't hesitate to write us again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. I was assisted on this letter with research and commentary provided by Aine Steele, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Maridonna Benvenuti and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, Adelaide de Beaumont 6 December 2007 References: [1] "Corsica." (WWW:wikipedia.org, 19 June 2007). http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Corsica&oldid=136573422 [2] "Corsican language." (WWW:Wikipedia.org, 19 Jun 2007) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Corsican_language&oldid=135916046 [3] There are quite a few differences between Tuscan and Corsican; one of the most visible is that words ending in <-o> in Tuscan (and standard Italian) typically end in <-u> in Corsican, e.g., instead of . In this respect Corsican goes along with Sicilian and most of the southern Italian dialects, rather than with Tuscan and the central and northern dialects. We do not have access to the few examples of written records in Corsican from your period; since the island was governed from mainland Italy, the written records were largely maintained in a language and spelling consistent with the mainland. Accordingly, the spellings we recommend will be northern and central dialect spellings. [4] Appendix Probi, as published in Baehrens, W. A., _Sprachlicher Kommentar zur vulga"rlateinischen Appendix Probi_, 1922. http://ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/appendix_probi.html In the Appendix Probi, a 3rd or 4th c. compilation of common scribal errors, we find for instance the following: baculus non vaclus (i.e., ', not ') vapulo non baplo alveus non albeus [5] Herlihy, David, R. Burr Litchfield, and Anthony Molho, "Florentine Renaissance Resources: Online Tratte of Office Holders 1282-1532" (WWW: Brown University, Providence, RI, 2000). http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/tratte/ [6] De Felice, Emidio, _Dizionario dei cognomi italiani_ (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1978), s.n Corvi, Fini. , the Latinized form of the given name , is found in Tuscany in 1122; is a pet form of names like and . De Felice also lists an undated variant surname . [7] Ferrante laVolpe, _Men's names from Florence, 1427_ (WWW: Self- published, 1996; Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1999). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/ferrante/catasto/ [8] "Sampiero Corso." (WWW:fr.wikipedia.org, 19 June 2007.) http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Sampiero_Corso&oldid=16290805 [9] De Felice, Emidio, _Dizionario dei nomi italiani_ (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan, 1992), s.n. Corso. [10] Arval Benicoeur and Talan Gwynek, "Fourteenth Century Venetian Personal Names" (WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1999). Where we have records of people's nicknames, they tend to be short and are often descriptive of the individual. For example, nicknames recorded in a document in 14th century Venice include "Antonio da Ferrara, called Tonso" and "Francesco Contarini, called Rizo"; "tonso" is a descriptive for someone with very short hair, and "rizo" is descriptive of someone with curly hair. http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/arval/venice14/ [11] Double given names or middle names were common in some parts of Italy in your period and later. [12, 13] The most common pattern was for one of the names to be a saint's name, usually the second [13], so using as a second given name is plausible. Vincenzo was a reasonably popular name in central Italy [5]. [12] Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, _Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy_, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 255-258. The author notes, "Approximately 60% of the nine hundred children of Florentine bourgeois families studied by means of familial documentation bear a second given name in the period 1360-1530." [13] Lyneya Fairbowe, unpublished research based on a baptismal register from Palermo 1561-3 that is available from the research library of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. Her data shows many examples of double and triple given names. [14] We have also found the modern surname , which we have not found prior to 1600. Google returns examples of both and as modern surnames. [15] Maridonna Benvenuti, "Milanese Notaries 1396-1635" (WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel, 2004). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/maridonna/milaneseNotaries/ [16] Juliana de Luna, "Masculine Names from Thirteenth Century Pisa" (WWW: Academy of S. Gabriel, 2002). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/juliana/pisa/ [17] "Archivio di Stato di Brescia" (WWW: Centro per la ricerca e lo sviluppo di Metodologie e Applicazioni di Archivi Storici, 2007). Records from Brescia in the Lombardy region show the Fenaroli family appearing from 1322. http://www.maas.ccr.it/PDF/Brescia.pdf [18] "Giovanni Battista Moroni." (WWW:Wikipedia.org). The discussion of Moroni's work "Il Sarto" 'The Tailor' describes it as depicting "a member of the Fenaroli family." Moroni was from Brescia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giambattista_Moroni