I came across the name Wealthy a lot. Also, Worthy and a lot of other strange names. One of the most odd, but I found it in the south..was Orange.

I was really very tempted to make a list of the unusal names, but thought it would slow me down, in indexing. I could do that now, tho, since I am arbitrating and mostly just have to click. Maybe I will do that when the trento baptism project is done.

I found the most odd names in upstate NY. More unusual, than in the southern states.

Just goes to show why our area was called the "Burned Over District" in the 1800s - so many religious movements and fervent - many accepted but many also condemned. Many of the names came from the Bible or other stories.

The Oneida Community (free love, etc) to the Fox Sisters (clairvoyants) in Moravia to Jemima Wilkinson's Publick Friends and of course, Joseph Smith & Brigham Young with the Mormon Church. Makes for interesting reading, especially since the sites are still here.

With Wealthy, I just keep imagining the conversations when he was in school or courting a young lady.

Eleven wrote:

I was really very tempted to make a list of the unusal names, but thought it would slow me down, in indexing. I could do that now, tho, since I am arbitrating and mostly just have to click. Maybe I will do that when the trento baptism project is done.

So many times I get distracted like this when reading some of these documents. I come up with some idea and I started making lists and yes, it slows me down alot! When doing something like this you need to stay focused and that is so hard sometimes.

DaveFerro wrote:

With Wealthy, I just keep imagining the conversations when he was in school or courting a young lady.

I agree..I can only imagine!

I am making a list while doing these baptisms...but, only so I can check on the spellings of the names, when I get to one that has just a blob for one of the vowels within the name. Usually, that would be a, o and e. I may as well put the right one..if you cant tell which it is. It isnt slowing me down in arbitration. Thats just clicking, mostly.

I have to do some lookups from time to time...usually a location, when I am doing 1945 florida state census. You cant always tell the city name and I will get two people spelling it differently. I am not familiar with some of these places, so i google it to get the proper name.

With the baptisms...I sometimes cant help myself from looking up words.

The arbitrating goes very very fast. I could probably reach the same total as what I indexed, in less than half the time.

Getting back to names, even the italians have their oddball names. Normally, the same names go round and round. But, from time to time, you get a name that you have never heard of before...and I have read thousands and thousands of records.

Cathy showed me this site that I find helpful. Not sure if you can use it but here it is anyway.

www.nomix.it/700d.php

Another great site to add to my collection - getting very confused though about where I put them.

The ancestor chart I was sent for my maternal grandmother has the first names following the naming custom, but before the 1800s, there are first names that are not in the most recent generations: Aurelia, Elisabetta, Giovanna, Feliciano, Giambattista, Isidoro and others.

Some are common and appear later, like Maria, Teresa, Anna.
I thought Geltrude was a typo, but found a Sister Geltrude in one of the Maggio books.

There are some names I had never heard of, at least not for Italians: Polycarpo, Sinibaldo, Potito

Naturally, they were Americanized here. One aunt changed my (foster/2nd cousin) mother's name from Antonia to Antoinette, two aunts from Chiara to Carrie and Incoronata to Ida. Chiara is found throughout, starting in 1736.

This chart is on another topic at Gente, thanks to BillieDeKid (Elisabeth after Grandmother Elisabetta)

Off to wander around the website Cathy submitted - thanks to her and Nuccia.

Chiara is so pretty. Its a name used in the trento area, too. Another name popular there (male) is Lodovico. I wouldnt name my child that..but I kinda like it. Baldassare is also very popular there..along with the normal italian names. One thing in this area is, there is no Vincenzo..it seems to be vicenzo..no N. There are a few names that pop up that have me thinking..that poor kid..lol

Our parents just wanted to be more American. My birth father was Mario, but his diary says Marty; birth mother shortened hers to Josie. There were 7 boys in my father's family and not one name after grandpa Emilio, nor grandsons and there are a ton of them.

I wasn't baptized until 6 months later because they were arguing about the name - Emilio was not on the table for my mother, but middle name ended up as Emery - I have been thinking of changing it to Emilio lately.

There seems to be a (strange) custom of changing Vincenzo to Jim when immigrating. Others have posted about this (Biff) and I can't find a good explanation for a link between the two names. A book at the library gave one but it did not make sense to me.

You should keep notes on what you find - it would make a good book or blog entry, etc. Think of the history.

Eleven wrote:

Chiara is so pretty. Its a name used in the trento area, too. Another name popular there (male) is Lodovico. I wouldnt name my child that..but I kinda like it. Baldassare is also very popular there..along with the normal italian names. One thing in this area is, there is no Vincenzo..it seems to be vicenzo..no N. There are a few names that pop up that have me thinking..that poor kid..lol

I have heard of Lodovico before. I believe is has Slovakian roots. I also think this may have been my husbands birth fathers name. He later changed it to Louis when he came to North America. I haven't had time to really look into this side of the family but one day I will have to.

Baldassare I have heard as a surname before (Baldassara actually) but never as a first name.

DaveFerro wrote:

There seems to be a (strange) custom of changing Vincenzo to Jim when immigrating. Others have posted about this (Biff) and I can't find a good explanation for a link between the two names. A book at the library gave one but it did not make sense to me.

I have always found this a strange translation myself. The common thought is that Vincenzo..Cenz sounds like James. I have never met any Italian in Toronto that is named Vincenzo that goes by Jim. They are either go by Vincenzo or Vincent, Vince. People don't change their names too much any more. I think because there isn't as much pressure to North Americanize anymore. People seem to take their cultures, names and traditions with them when they come here. Its nice.

For a long time, I thought my husbands grandfather, was guiding us in our research. His name was Vincenzo.

Very early on in my research (16 years ago) we ordered, I think it was the 1910 census. My husband and I were together...and we were looking for Vincenzo. I had the proper film for the last name and it was a matter of scrolling thru the first names. We had to get to the V's. Hubby scrolls, stops..he is on C. He continues to scroll, lands on F. He scrolls again, lands on J and was about to go again when I said wait. Right smack in the center of the screen, was Their surname..with all of his aunts and uncles...but his grandfathers name wasnt Vincenzo, there..it was James.

Both my husband and I, totally forgot that many Italian men used James when they were Vincent. I knew quite a few, growing up that were Jimmie.

If we had not accidently landed on that, we would have never found him. We would have gotten to V, he wouldnt have been there and we would have never thought to look for him as James. The other censuses, were also James. But his passenger record, naturalization and death cert are vincenzo. He has some grandsons named vincenzo..and some are James. The vincenzo grandsons are called Vinnie.

Another strange thing that happened in that same time period was..one day, I had to go to the fhl to order film. I had nothing else to do and the place was empty..so we decided to mess with their computer. In those days, thats how you looked to see what records they had etc. So, we were playing with that..and found some kind of listing for Italian towns, which were broken down first by regions and then provinces. We didnt know where Vincenzo and wife came from..other than Benevento. By this time, we knew, where ever our parents said they came from..was never the town, just the general area. So..when we came to benevento, I said to my husband..oooh lets look at the towns. (Dont even ask me why). We began looking and I told him, I want to print them out. In those days, to print was 5 cents a copy..and it printed on that paper with the holes on the sides. So..we are printing away, page after page and my husband says..I dont understand why you want to do this. I said..just keep printing..lol Finally, when I saw how many copies we were making, I told him to stop. We were somewhere in the letter P. (First inital of the town.)

About a year later, I was finally able to get a death certificate for vincenzo..and it listed his town as Paduli. I remembered that printout..so I took it out to see it.

Paduli was 4th up from the last name we copied.

I would have bet money, back then..that Vincenzo was following us around..lol

Eleven,

Funny about that Vincenzo/James connection: I had been trying to trace the family of a friend (Jim Vivenzio) whose father was called Jim but actually Vincenzo after the grandfather. He kept saying Padula and my mother said another part of the family (who are related to Jim as well - the grandmother remarried into her brother-in-law's family of Impaglia) also said it was called Padula.

I could not find the family in Auburn, but when Jim mentioned they had been in Pennsylvania, within 10 minutes, I found them in Hazle Town, PA, along with the Impaglias.

Now there is a Padula in Salerno Province, so we looked there. However, Lori (Poipu04) sent me a link to her friend Alex's site about Paduli in Benevento Province and he lists Auburn as one of the cities where emigrants from Paduli settled - the Vivenzio and Impaglia names are on a plaque there. So I still have to contact Alex - too tired and busy. But if you can use the site here it is: Paduli In America

There is a link to an Excel spreadsheet of over 1200 names of immigrants from Paduli. Click on LIST/ELENCO at the left- note the Australia link too.

And if you have any info, please let us know.

Thanks,

Dave

Thanks Dave, but I have been there. Matter of fact, Lori and I thought we had a connection. We had the same name, from the same town, but never found a connection. The surname was that of Vincenzo's nephew. And by the way..my Vincenzo is not far from that part of PA. They were from a town called Old Boston Settlement, which is now known as Avoca. I believe thats not far..or is it hazelton?

Vincenzos surname was D'Alessandro. I dont even have a proper surname for the wife. Every document came back with close..but not exact spellings. I couldnt even find her on a ship manifest, even tho she traveled with her young son 2-3 years old, maybe. Of course, he has the D'Alessandro name, but they probably just listed him as figlio giuseppe. I cant trace them in Italy, either, because of that gap in time, we all suffer. I have his parents names...but, without being able to fill the gap..I got nowhere.

I am so anxious for ancestry to get the towns of both my mother and my husbands mother. I would love the pleasure of being able to do this research, from my own home. You can do much better searches with a time restriction.

I bet if we DNA swabbed all of Paduli, we would find our connection, Eleven, LOL. I know from the other Paduli people with a Limongelli connection that even if we can't make the connection with paper, we have circumstancial evidence of a relation like the same ancestral profession (blacksmith or bricklayer for the Limongelli family).

Baldassare was the first name of a relative of mine from Calabria. It is from the name of one of the 3 wisemen, Balthazar. I had never heard of it until I found him in my tree.

Dave, Alex is out of the country now, but if you want to contact the president of the Paduli club in Italy, I can give you his e-mail. He speaks somewhat fluent english.

When I first started genealogy, we did my husbands fathers town first. I will bet you, if we could get back far enough, with these little towns, the whole town is related..lol

In these trento baptisms, many of the parents have the identical surname. I know, in my husbands family, we found two sets of second cousins that married...meaning, the husband and the wife, both had the same great grandparents. Because there seems to be so much of this in trento..I am wondering if even first cousins married there.

Hello,

Oh well, Eleven, I hoped it would help. The census for Jim's family in Pennsylvania says Hazle Township - this may be Hazelton now or it is in the township.

I knew about Balthazar/Baldassare and checked the Britannica for Polycarpo and found St. Polycarp, a Greek bishop who was martyred in the 2nd Century.

We noticed in the Testa chart surnames on both sides of the family and another Testa family actually had the same surname marrying.

In Theresa Maggio's book on the Sicilian towns, she says people were marrying their first cousins because they were the only people they could trust - due to the Mafia influence.

In these small towns, there are probably a shortage of available spouses.

Reading the Ferro census from 1920 there are my grandparents, then Frank, Tony, Armand, Mario, Robert, Mike and Jim. One problem: Robert should be Albert. I asked him about this and he seemed to skirt the question - maybe he changed his name too.

Dave