did you know? names and surnames in Spain
Apr 12th, 2014, 04:29 AM
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In Italy, there's nothing confusing at all: a woman never changes her name, unless she hates it and asks a court to change it.
In some situations, mainly in small towns, where a woman's family isn't known, people may informally refer to her with her husband's surname. I sometimes see a reference to a husbands surname on a funeral notice, precisely because people may not recognize the woman based on her own surname. In that case, they use the preposition "in" before the husband's surname. Let's say that Maria Rossi, wife of Pietro Verdi, dies and that there is no other Rossi in town. On the funeral notice, Maria may be listed as Maria Rossi in Verdi, which literally means she married into the Verdi family. The "in Verdi" is usually written below her name, and in a smaller typeface.
Italy has some of the oddest surnames in the world. There is an Italian television director whose surname is Cinquantaquattro, or Fiftyfour. I would love know how that came about. It's not unique, either, because there are also people named Fifteen, or Thirty, or many other numbers; most, but not all, of these names are divisible by five. Then there's the lawyer called "Pigliapoco", or Takeslittle. (I don't know if it refers to her fee or to how much she manages to get as damages in your case.) And Cut-ear, Shoulder-rest, Eats-Lard (the mayor of Senigallia), and even Frisky-bird. Bird is a nickname in northern Italy for what's called more delicately "the male member". In the south it has a different nickname, which led a politician from the north to say, "How can you govern a country where what in the north is called a bird is called a fish in the south?"
Italian surnames tend to be very specific to a region, and often even to a particular town or village. Historically, Italians didn't move around much, and whenever possible returned home at some point if they did go away. I once found a web site that listed the top ten surnames in a specified town. I made the list for our town, and for the next town over, both with a population of about 5000. On the two lists, there wasn't a single name in common. This is partly because there is a greater variety of surnames in Italy than in almost any other country. I once read that the 10 most frequent surnames in Italy cover only about 1% of the population.
The ending of Italian surnames often tells you where the family is originally from. For example, names ending in "u" tend to be from Sardegna. Jewish surnames in Italy often are the name of a town or city, and (broadly speaking) names that end in "i" tend to be from northern Italy, although "isi" tends to be a southern ending.
If you have an Italian surname and would like to pin its origin down, type it into the box on this page, and hit "trova".
http://www.gens.info/italia/it/turis...dizioni-italia
In some situations, mainly in small towns, where a woman's family isn't known, people may informally refer to her with her husband's surname. I sometimes see a reference to a husbands surname on a funeral notice, precisely because people may not recognize the woman based on her own surname. In that case, they use the preposition "in" before the husband's surname. Let's say that Maria Rossi, wife of Pietro Verdi, dies and that there is no other Rossi in town. On the funeral notice, Maria may be listed as Maria Rossi in Verdi, which literally means she married into the Verdi family. The "in Verdi" is usually written below her name, and in a smaller typeface.
Italy has some of the oddest surnames in the world. There is an Italian television director whose surname is Cinquantaquattro, or Fiftyfour. I would love know how that came about. It's not unique, either, because there are also people named Fifteen, or Thirty, or many other numbers; most, but not all, of these names are divisible by five. Then there's the lawyer called "Pigliapoco", or Takeslittle. (I don't know if it refers to her fee or to how much she manages to get as damages in your case.) And Cut-ear, Shoulder-rest, Eats-Lard (the mayor of Senigallia), and even Frisky-bird. Bird is a nickname in northern Italy for what's called more delicately "the male member". In the south it has a different nickname, which led a politician from the north to say, "How can you govern a country where what in the north is called a bird is called a fish in the south?"
Italian surnames tend to be very specific to a region, and often even to a particular town or village. Historically, Italians didn't move around much, and whenever possible returned home at some point if they did go away. I once found a web site that listed the top ten surnames in a specified town. I made the list for our town, and for the next town over, both with a population of about 5000. On the two lists, there wasn't a single name in common. This is partly because there is a greater variety of surnames in Italy than in almost any other country. I once read that the 10 most frequent surnames in Italy cover only about 1% of the population.
The ending of Italian surnames often tells you where the family is originally from. For example, names ending in "u" tend to be from Sardegna. Jewish surnames in Italy often are the name of a town or city, and (broadly speaking) names that end in "i" tend to be from northern Italy, although "isi" tends to be a southern ending.
If you have an Italian surname and would like to pin its origin down, type it into the box on this page, and hit "trova".
http://www.gens.info/italia/it/turis...dizioni-italia
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