regional names

[George Thompson]

Wison Gray, commenting under "folk with an l" notes:
I once had an a Italian friend named "di Napoli" who was
> from Siragusa. I found this hard to understand until it dawned on me that,
> when Siragusa is the default location, why would anyone from Siragusa who lived
> in Siragusa be known as being from Siragusa? OTOH, if my friend's ancestors
> had moved from Napoli to Siragusa, then the fact that they weren't from
> around those parts would have been worthy of note and been reflected
> in the (new) surname of their descendents.

I have long been puzzled by names like "Italiano" and "Deutsch" -- what would lead to someone being called "the Italian" in an Italian speaking community (or, "the German" . . . )?
I suppose the name "English" could have been acquired by an Englishman living in Scotland.   I don't think I've encountered the name "Francais".
Once upon a time, the peninsula of Italy was a multitude of princedoms and republics -- was one region considered the real "Italy" -- or should I be thinking of Trieste or the Italian-speaking communities in the Austrian Alps?  As for Deutsch, I suppose that that is a name that might have been assigned in Austria, or in German-speaking Switzerland?

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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