ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2675 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2675 ************************************ 16 Feb 2003 From: S L Friedemann Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You wanted to know if would be an appropriate name for an Italian woman living between 1450 and 1475. Here is a brief letter with the information we have found. There was no unified Italian language spoken in Italy in your period; rather, there were a number of distinct dialects, spoken in the northern, central, and southern parts of Italy. Milan is in the north of Italy, and thus we have considered names appropriate for the northern dialects. Unfortunately, we have no sources for names explicitly from Milan, and only rudimentary sources for northern Italian names in general. However, we found records of two women named who were mistresses of members of the Sforza family, who ruled Milan in the 15th century: , who bore the Duke of Milan a daughter in 1463, and , who was mistress to Ludovico Maria Sforza in 1497. [1] If these data are correct, is a fine name for a Milanese woman. is incorrect; the preposition should be the northern Italian rather than the Latin . We find the byname "of Milan" recorded in 14th century Venice; it is a fine choice. [2] We'd like to note that this byname isn't particularly likely for someone who was actually living in Milan: Bynames were used to distinguish people, and calling a person "from Milan" in Milan isn't a useful distinguishing characteristic. However, a Milanese woman who moved to the suburbs or to another city would very likely have been identified that way. In your period, women were most often identified as their father's daughters, e.g. or . As we said, we do not have many good sources for northern Italian names, but the masculine names listed in the following article are probably suitable for 15th century Milan: "Fourteenth Century Venetian Personal Names" http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/arval/venice14/ We hope that this brief letter has been useful to you, and that you won't hesitate to write again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Arval Benicoeur, Maridonna Benvenuti, Adelaide de Beaumont, and Laurensa de Chambord. For the Academy, -Aryanhwy merch Catmael -- References: [1] "Sforza Family" (WWW: 2002?). http://genealogy.euweb.cz/italy/sforza.html [2] Arval Benicoeur and Talan Gwynek, "Fourteenth Century Venetian Personal Names" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1999). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/arval/venice14/