regional names

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:14 AM -0400 3/21/10, George Thompson wrote:
>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" . . . )?

as opposed to "Tedeschi", say.

But despite the street name trends commented on
earlier in the thread, we do find e.g. a "Chicago
Avenue" in Chicago, , a Los Angeles Street in
L.A., a Scotland Street in Edinburgh, and so on.
So why not a François in France or a (di) Napoli
in Naples?

LH

>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.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org