Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 16:14:27 -0800

Quick, Name Boy, to the Onomastics-mobile ....

Since I have you all captive here, and I need to get into practice to teach my names classes at Symposium, I offer the following as an example of A way to document a name. Not THE way. I don't know THE way. But this one works fairly well for me.

Ysabella is undoubtedly cool. It is very nice, it is period. Is it Italian? I don't know. All the spellings I have from Italian sources start with an I. I know that initial I and Y are sometimes interchanged in pre-modern French, though, as demonstrated on p. 337 of Dauzat's 'Dictionnaire etymologique des noms de famille et prenoms de France', sub Isabelle. BTW, the name 'Isabella' is found on p. 215 of De Felice 'Dizionario dei nomi italiani' with extensive discussion, all in Italian I'm afraid.

'Of the rains' as a surname--first, I look up the Italian word for 'rain'. No problem, Concise Cambridge says it's a feminine noun, 'pioggia'. OK. Now we take a look in De Felice's 'dizionario dei cognomi italiani' (not the same as the book cited above, it's 'cognomi' this time, not 'nomi'). It does not appear in this very good source for Italian surnames, either in the text or in the list of variant forms in the index. Well, rats.

Let's take another tack. Hauling another hefty tome (THUD) out of the box, we look in 'Our Italian Surnames' by Fucilla, who had the kind consideration to write in English. Names here are arranged by type-- pet names, kinship names, compound names, desirable and undesirable qualities, botanical names, topographical names, geographical names, bird names, animal names, fish names, insect names, and names, and names ..... I think you get the picture. Well, what category does 'rain' fall under? No weather names listed. OK, maybe topographical names. Weather is sort of a landscape feature, or at least it's closer to that than anything else I can think of. No dice. No weather names. We do have lots of water-related names--dell'Acqua (of the water) catches my eye (p. 101). Hmm. Possibly she might like that, it goes down on the 'possibility' list. Reading on, I see another surname of possible interest, 'Raina'. It actually means 'ravine', but it reads like 'rain' in English. I make a note of this too.

Since I don't know the person in question, I don't know what her preference is--for sound or sense. So I have a couple of possibilities to offer her, depending on what she really wants. If I were consulting with this lady, I would send her a note with a brief (she gets off easy, she's not a herald) summary of the above, and what I have found so far--here, 'dell'Acqua' and 'Raina'. If she doesn't like either, I offer to work with her further. If she is dead set on 'of the rain' I make a note of this and check with friends and acquaintances more Italian-literate than I am, make a trip to the library, etc. just to cover all the bases.

What I get out of this is a chance to brush up my vestigial Italian, the information that Italian bynames don't seem to be formed from weather phenomena, at least ordinarily, and a certain amount of aerobic exercise from hefting all these books around.

Hopes this helps,

Elisabeth AEstel

This is the web site of the An Tir College of Heralds of the Society of Creative Anachronism, Inc.
It is not a corporate publication of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Incorporated, and does not delineate SCA policies.

Updated: November 12, 2003