What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet, wrote Shakespeare, but I’m going to argue with Shakespeare here. As an Italian American from New York, I have enough bravado to do that.
A powerful and enduring Southern-Italian tradition is the naming of children after their grandparents and other family members. As opposed to the American tradition, for instance, of giving a father’s name to his son, adding “Junior” to the end of it, the Italian custom is respectful of a hierarchy:
- Your first son is named after his paternal grandfather; your first daughter after her paternal grandmother.
- Your second son is named after his maternal grandfather; your second daughter after her maternal grandmother.
- Then, if you’re blessed (or crazy) enough to have more children, you can, after all four grandparents have had their names passed down, start picking from siblings, aunts, uncles, and patron saints.
This is why in my family, and in many Italian-American families, there are duplicate names – three Dominics, two Giovannis, three Stefaninas. This was done as a sign of respect, and also as dutiful adherence to tradition. It was a means of remembering whom you came from and of ensuring that the names of your ancestors – and by extension their memories – lived on in generations to come.
To name your children any other way was disrespect, and un peccato, too, a sin, a shame. Choosing a random name simply because you liked it, as many Americans, including Italian Americans, now do, was unheard of. Why not just slap your parents across the face and make the insult faster? My mother, for example, willingly did not name my brother Anthony after her father, as tradition dictated. She named him after her brother, Antonio, who died when she was just a teenager. My grandfather had never been much of a father to her, and he made her life hard, and my grandmother’s life even harder, and as such my mother felt very little devotion to him. She sent a message when she named her second son after another man. A clear message that made my grandfather furious, but after a life of neglect and pain at his hands, it was my mother’s one retribution, a single act that could balance the scales of the past.
So you see, this business of names, it’s a serious one.
Not surprisingly, if you’ve been listening to The Italian American Podcast, I am a champion of this tradition, as I am of many traditions. My nephews have names like Zachary and Tyler. My nieces, at least, have Italian names like Sofia and Bella, but they are names that belong to no one. They are names without history. They are names popular during the period within which the children were born, which is a very American way of doing things: modern, contemporary, clean-slated, independent of the past.
I like the idea of names with depth; names that drop like anchors into the great sea of our lives, fixing us, no matter where we drift, to a certain person and place. A name with lineage means you belong to something larger than yourself. While the American ethos is, more often than not – be loyal first to yourself, even at the expense of belonging to the tribe – Italians have understood that it is this very belonging that makes life worth living.
Then there are names that are changed. The stories we so often hear about ancestors arriving at Ellis Island, only to have their names, too exotic and syllabic for American immigration officials to pronounce, unceremoniously transformed with the quick stroke of a pen.
In Episode 24 of The Italian American Podcast, listeners Samuel and Lisa Amato tell the story of their mother/grandmother, who, at the threat of punishment by her Irish school-teacher, was forced to change her name from Crocifissa to Mary. She went by Mary for the rest of her life.
I ask Shakespeare, and you, if there is or if there is not a difference between a woman called Crocifissa all of her life, and a woman called Mary?
You have to explain a name like Crocifissa at every turn. You have to pronounce it for people, sound it out, slowly, syllable by syllable. You have to say things like, It was my grandmother’s name. And when people ask, What is that? Is that Italian? You get to say, Yes, it’s Italian. My family is from Italy…
You can’t forget who you are, who your people are, and where you come from, with a name like Crocifissa.
In Episode 19 of the podcast, Patricia de Stacy Harrison talks about her grandfather, who, trying to establish a lucrative finance career in America, felt that if he altered his last name, Destasio, to de Stacy, it would sound not Italian, but French, and this would grant him the credibility he needed.
In Episode 18 of the show, Tony Reali talks about the extensive thought that went into naming his daughter, Francesca. “These names need to live on,” he says.
In Part II of The Godfather trilogy, an Ellis Island immigration official changes the last name of young Vito from Andolini to Corleone. Seeing the name of the village Vito hails from written on his papers, the immigration official – either without care or without realizing – writes down Corleone when Vito does not respond to his question. Renaming not only Vito, but also generations of his descendants.
And me? I was renamed, too. It was the morning of my first day of kindergarten, as I remember it, and my big sister sat me up on the kitchen table to tie my shoes. They’re gonna call you Dolores at school, she told me. When you learn to write your name, you’ll write, Dolores. She is nine years older than me, and, after beginning grade school in Italy, her experience entering American schools when she spoke no English was not a good one; she wanted, not to rob me of anything, of course, but to spare me. She wanted me to be American. She wanted me to have the ease and luxury of mixing in with the other children that she did not have herself. It was an act of love.
I nodded in agreement, as I devotedly and admiringly did with everything she told me to do. My real name is Addolorata, a very old, very traditional, Southern-Italian name, which comes from my maternal grandmother, who died, much to my perpetual heartbreak, before I was born.
Dolores it was, from then to now. But I would have liked to choose for myself.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but I would have chosen, Addolorata.
Loved this article! Thanks Dolores/Addolorata!
Christine! I’m so glad! Love that you called me by true name! 🙂 That definitely made me smile…
Addolorata is a beautiful name. My mother was sadly given an American name, and gave all of her children American names too. I longed for an Italian name my whole childhood. As an adult it felt too weird to change my first name, so I changed my last to my mother’s maiden name and convinced my husband too. I feel so much more me having a last name that reflects who I am.
Thank you, Jenn! I think it is, too. 🙂 I completely understand the feeling weird about changing your name as an adult; I’ve thought of asking everyone to start calling me Addolorata many times, but it seems awkward after so many years of Dolores. But I love what you’ve done with your last name! That is beautiful, and it matters, right? Sounds like you completely get it. 😉 Thanks so much for writing!
My son, 17 years old is Salvatore Joseph and my daughter 15, is Angela Maria. Long live Italian names!
All beautiful names! Love that, Mia!
my Dads name was Isidore Dominic Piscopo, His fathers name was Isitoro but they changed it to Isidore when he entered the states, and my name is Dominique Doré Piscopo and my daughter Giabella Isidora
Those are gorgeous names, Dominique! Wonderful to keep the tradition going. Thank you for writing!
Lovely article, I read it with great pleasure and shared it with my husband. In some Southern Italian families, your son’s son was to be named after his paternal grandfather so that he would also take the surname. This would get a lot stricter I know but it’s the way it used to be in the late 1800/ early 1900. 🙂
You’re right, Maria; it was my father’s dream to have his name passed down, and unfortunately none of my brothers have sons, which as you note, is the only way to keep the full name going. A very important tradition to many Southern-Italian men especially. Thank you for sharing!
Great article – enjoyed it and it is so true; my parents are from calabria; older brother named after paternal grandfather and older sister named after paternal grandmother and I am named after maternal grandfather….for my son we comprised – first name maternal grandfather (Americanized version of my name – (Antonio)- his middle name is paternal grandfather- ignazio)…however even in Italy the city hall registrar misspelled our surname – so my father and his younger sister have two “t’s while his brothers/sisters/cousins have one “t”…for you – never too late to switch to Addolorata it is a beautiful name
Thank you! I’ve thought about switching many times! Since this blog post, I’m getting a lot of paesani calling me Addolorata, which is SO wonderful! There’s still time so I may just make it happen…. 🙂 We hear about these changes in names all the time, misspellings, etc. Traditions change, for sure, we tweak them and make them our own, but as long as you keep them going in some way, as you have with this tradition, that’s what’s important! Thank you so much for writing!
Dolores/Addolorata –
What a wonderful post. Thank you so much for writing it. I recently became a new dad of beautiful twin girls. As someone, like you, who is Italian American (first generation) and appreciates tradition, if I had a son I would have named him after my late father, Ettore. As we had two girls, I could have–or should have–named one of them after my paternal grandmother, Angela. But I never knew my paternal grandmother. She remained in Italy and died before I was born. Wanting to honor my father’s side, my wife and I settled upon the name, Pinuccia, which is a variation on Josephine in Italian (there is also Giuseppina, Pina, Nuccia, tc). Pinuccia is named after my father’s brother, Giuseppe, whom we all loved and and called Zio Pinuccio. As you can imagine, it has raised some eyebrows. No one really pronounces it correctly, and I have to spell it out and explain where it comes from. Some people have even gone as far as to question why I would name her that. But as you also mention, I appreciate the opportunity to explain and connect my and Pinuccia’s heritage. I have wondered a bit if I’m making her life more difficult than it needs to be, but I hope that she too appreciates the tradition and why we named her as we did. Plus, I really do think it’s a beautiful name. My father and my zio Pinuccio, if they were still will us, would have loved it. Thanks again!
I LOVE this!! To begin, I adore the name Giuseppina, and in fact one of my favorite people in the world, my aunt, was named Giuseppina. We called her Pinuch, or Pinucha, as you note, and even that nickname, to me, is a wonderful one. I think this is such a great variation on the tradition; your daughter is named after a beloved ancestor and gets to carry her ancestry with her throughout her life. I hope she appreciates it, too, and my guess would be that, even if in her younger years she does not, at some point, she will be very grateful for it. So glad you wrote to share this. 🙂
In my maternal grandfather’s village of Capracotta, Incoronato was a first name for a male. The female equivalent was Incoronata. Both probably refer to the Blessed Virgin, Crowned in Heaven or La Santissima Vergine, Incoronata in Celo.
Ben, I have heard this a lot, all over Italy….I know in my family there were quite a few men and women named Sebastiano and Sebastiana, or some variation….
Thank you for this post. I truly enjoyed reading it. I immediately thought of my family while reading it. My great grandfather’s sister was named Addolorata and when she immigrated to America she was known as Delores. Your name is beautiful. Also while reading your post about last name changes that applied to my family as well. My great grandfather Luigi Dell’Arciprete immigrated from Abruzzo to Philadelphia 1899. He came earlier than many of the other immigrants so he felt the need to Americanize his name. Luigi Dell’Arciprete became Louis Priest a year or so after he arrived in America. Most of our family wish it was never changed! Actually I have not found any paperwork showing proof of name change. I have a feeling it was never changed.
Dave, I haven’t heard of another Addolorata/Dolores! This is the first. 🙂 I have a cousin in Italy who goes by Dora, instead of Addolorata, but no Dolores. I think it’s a beautiful name, too. So glad you took time to read some of our blog posts; hope you’re listening to the podcast as well! Stay in touch!