Names from 15th Century Naples

by Sara L. Friedemann (Aryanhwy merch Catmael)

© 2003 Sara L. Friedemann; all rights reserved

This is a draft, last updated 04Apr03

Data

These names are of men and women found in Latin tax documents from 15th century Naples. [1] The names are all recorded in Latin, suitable for written contexts only; I do not know enough about the linguistic situation in southern Italy to make a guess at vernacular forms of these names. However, I have made comparisons with the names found here and names found in early 15th century Florence . [2,3] The data from Florence is close temporally to this data, but dialectically farther away. .

Name structure

Many of the people listed in this record were of noble or royal status; Dominus or Domina was a common title. Because these names are from the upper class, they may not accurately represent the general naming trends of Naples at this time. That said, it is still the case that almost all of the people had just one given name and one byname, usually a locative (e.g., one which identifies a person based on where they are from). In cases where there are three name elements instead of two, e.g. Nicolaus Marinus de Summa, it is more likely that Marinus is a family name and not a second given name. In the case of Matheus Talian Furlanus, I do not know how to interpret the second two elements; one is perhaps a family name and the other a descriptive of some sort.

Names of Women

8 women were recorded in this document, with the given names Collela, Ioanna, Magalda, Oliva, Perretta, Pipa, Polisena, and Ramundetta. Giovanna, Pippa and Pulisena are found in Florence in 1427, with Giovanna occuring 39 times and being the ninth most popular feminine name and Pippa occuring 19 times and being the 20th. Pulisena is found less than 5 times; it is thus fairly rare.

Complete list of women's names.

Names of Men

Of the 151 men listed in this document, the most common names are Iacobus and Jacobus found 18 times, Antonellus, Antoni, Antonius, and Antonutius 15 times, Ioannes and Joannes 10 times, and Nicolaus 9 times. These four names represent just over 33% of the population.

While many of the names in this list are found in Florence in roughly the same time period , there are also many that seem unique to this data-set. Below is a chart listing the given names, by frequency in Naples, along with the corresponding Florentine forms (which are in the vernacular dialects spoken in Florence at the time, as opposed to the Latin documentary forms from Naples), as well as and the frequency it is found in that data.

Complete list of men's names.

Bibliography

[1] Cozzetto, Fausto. Mezzogiorno e demografia nel XV secolo. Soveria M.lli, CZ : Rubbettino, c1986.

[2] Ferrante laVolpe, "Men's names from Florence, 1427" (WWW: Self-published, 1996; J. Mittleman, 1999).
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/ferrante/catasto

[3] Arval Benicoeur, "Feminine Given Names from the Online Catasto of Florence of 1427" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1998).
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/arval/catasto/