ITALIAN SURNAMES: AN ONOMASTIC STUDY

Abstract

The theme of this study is the analysis of Italian surnames in the city of Caxias do Sul. The main objective is the search for the root and a variety of pertinent and relevant information related to this theme. The corpus was extracted from baptism registration of people born in the area of the parish of Santa Teresa, in this municipality. The surnames, object of this analysis, covers five motivation sources: profession; place; physical or psychological characteristics, rejected children and of congratulatory nature. To be able to identify etymology as other important information for this study, we have used published works about this subject, mainly from the following dictionaries: Cortelazzo e Zolli (1979); De Felice (1982, 1987); Zingarelli (1983); Devoto e Oli (1990); Caffarelli e Marcato (2008). For this study, we have tried to answer questions related to Italian surnames of people from Caxias do Sul, broadly speaking, by presenting the Italian geographical origin of these names, and when possible, indicating its number of representativeness from the place of origin. We have approached the onomastic sign highlighting the existing distinctive feature between the onomastic and the linguistic sign. The results are partial and restricted because it is an ongoing research.

Keywords

• Italian surnames
• Motivation sources
• Onomastic sign