ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1855 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1855 ************************************ From: "Sara L Friedemann" 20 Dec 1999 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know what the pronunciation of the Italian feminine name is, and if would be an authentic name for the late 15th century. Here is a brief letter with the information we have found. Your name is nearly perfect; we have only one small correction to make on your surname. We find in Florence in 1427. [1] This makes a name meaning "Dianora of Florence" an excellent choice for your period. There are two surnames that mean "of Florence." The first is , which simply means "of Florence." The other is an adjectival form, , which means "the [female] Florentine." Both of these are fine choices for your period; however, a surname meaning "of Florence" would normally have been used by someone from Florence who now lived, or worked, elsewhere. If you are interested in a surname that isn't a locative, there is a list of Italian family names available on the web at: "Family Names Appearing in the Catasto of 1427" http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/ferrante/catasto/family_names.html For your period, a given name plus a family name is a fine structure. One caveat about this list: names longer than 10 characters have been cut to 10 characters. If you would like to know the full form of a truncated family name, please write us again, and we'll be happy to help you. We don't know very much about how the Florentine dialect of Italian was pronounced in your period. Our best guess at the pronunciation of is \dee-ah-NO-r@\, where the \@\ represents the final vowel sound in . We hope that this letter has been useful to you, and that you will not hesitate to write again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Maridonna Benvenuti, Arval Benicoeur, Talan Gwynek, Walraven van Nijmegen, Antonio Miguel de Santos Borja, Zenobia Naphtali, Juliana de Luna, and Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn. For the Academy, ~Aryanhwy merch Catmael December 20, 1999 --------------------------------------- References: [1] Arval Benicoeur, "Feminine Given Names from the Online Catasto of Florence of 1427" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1998) [URL:http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/arval/catasto].