Italian Orphan Names

Nov 13, 2004

Italy has a millennia-old tradition of abandoning unwanted infants. The Romans exposed them on remote hillsides to be (hopefully) adopted by someone who needed a child or (more likely) eaten by wolves. In more recent times, babies were left on church steps, in most cases to be raised by the Church. Since no one knew who their parents were, these abandoned children were given surnames denoting their orphan status:

• Orfanelli - little orphans
• Poverelli - little poor (people)
• Peverelli - slightly disguised version of the above
• Trovato, Trovatelli - found, little foundling
• Esposito - exposed. BTW, it's pronounced eh-SPO-sih-toe, not ess-po-ZEE-to

These names have by now been inherited for generations, but, somewhere along the line, these folks' ancestors were abandoned as infants.

Nicole over at zoomata.com sent me the following:

"Innocenti and Nocentini are both common names of orphan origins in Florence, from the Ospedale degli Innocenti (Hospital of the Innocents)... where babes were left, no questions asked, in a little revolving door in a corner... It's still there, with a little iron grate over it."

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