Names Again

Names again, given or inherited.

Although I’ve written about names before, it somehow seems a universal, non-stop, subject. What’s in a name. It’s curious how we relate to people with a specific name. Let’s see. I have quite a few Davids on my list. Three I’m actually on speaking terms with and several others are too far away both in time and distance to take into consideration. One I aways identify by adding his last name. Suddenly as I cross the piazza after my walk to the Duomo, another David stops to say hello. David or Davide is one of my favorite names. Then there are three James, which I’ve simplified by calling them James one, James two and James three.  There are a few Johns, with other less important ones lurking on my address list.

I wonder sometimes where the parents found some of the more unusual names. I’d include Edelweiss in that list, as well as Sigisfrido. I do find it strange that an Italian should be named after a German hero. So far haven’t run into anyone named Beowulf though. And my own name, Erika, isn’t exactly Italian either. But as time passed a couple of other Erikas turned up, but with a c instead of a k, having nothing to do with me. Erika is the Latin name of heather, growing in the heaths or woods. So a name is never just hapchance. Claudio too seems to be a popular name, although we chose it for our first-born so the American relatives would have no problems with the name. The problem of pronounciation does come up. In Italian it is relatively simple for words and names are pronounced the way they are spelled. Even in English it may be hard to know how the “ough” sound should be pronounced.

In the case of immigrants coming into Ellis Island in the early1900s, this might be solved in various ways. A friend of mine tells the story of her grandfather who immigrated from Russia.

This is the story as recounted by Elaine Greene Weisburg in her memoirs: “Lev Kreisman, a tobacconist in Kiev with a wife and two small children, was put out of work in the early 1890s by the Czar’s edict that Jews could no longer conduct a retail business in Russia. Lacking other resources to emigrate to the new world, he made an arrangement to indenture himself and his wife to a textile mill in New England for a period of time in return for passage and living arrangements while they worked off the debt. The young family spoke no English, but he picked up some useful words and phrases en route. When the ship landed, an official of the mill circulated among the indentured passengers taking names for the distribution of scrip to be used in the company store. My grandfather, apologizing for his lack of English, used one of the words he had recently learned. Immigrants would say, “I’m a greenhorn,” “I’m a greener,” “I’m green.” He said he was green. Gaining an extra letter, Greene became the family name, and so it remains for over a century. The first name was easier: most Levs become Leo in English—even Tolstoy.”

Given names are chosen. I’ll never know why someone chose to name a child Antenisca or Anacleto. It might have been a way of honoring, of remembering, the past.

Your last name depends on the circumstances of your conception and birth. The question of inherited or last names is fascinating and volumes could be written. Take some people I know who have names like Trequattrini (three coins), Quattrosoldi (four pennies), Trentavizi (thirty vices) Some names on the obituary bulletin board do make me smile. Caccialepre or hunt the hare, Frustalupi or whip the wolves. I don’t remember when I was told that the frequent last names in Tuscany such as Donodidio or Innocenti meant the baby had been abandoned in the Foundling Hospital. Perhaps the child had been put in the “wheel” that used to exist to help mothers remain anonymous. You can still see one in Florence in the portico of the Museo degli Innocenti in Piazza Santissima Annunziata. The  mother would put her infant in a sort of basket facing onto the piazza, ring a bell and leave so that the sisters could come and receive the baby on the other side. She might have left something with the child, perhaps a note or a half of a medal, keeping the other half to use in identifying the child if she should seek it out later.  

There’s a wonderful series of frescoes in the former hospital of Santa Maria della Scala across from the Duomo in Siena showing how the confraternity attended to the sick and the poor. Abandoned infants were given to wet nurses and then, as the children grew older , the girls were prepared for marriage, the boys were taught a craft, and both were taught to read and write. When the children came of age,  the girls were given a dowry and married off, and the boys, having learned a trade,  had the option of leaving.  Funded by the wealthy families, the hospital also offered meals to the poor and treated the sick as well as housing pilgrims.

Who knows? Charitable organizations like this, or mutual aid societies among the farmers or workers in a specific category, might once served their purpose.

People come and go but their names outlive them. A street or a piazza will often call to mind historical or cultural events when the person named has long disappeared. Yes, we know what Garibaldi looked like, what he stood for. But those many others who now exist as the name of a street – what did they look like, what did they eat for breakfast, how did they take their coffee? All we have now are names. And yet they lived and loved, fought for their beliefs, argued with each other. Sometimes we know what they looked like but little more. We may have known originally, but as time passed everything except the name on a street sign faded away.

And so, on it goes. I wonder what our Paleolithic ancestors called each other.