Language & culture help: Italian?

[resonant]

Anybody out there in Italy, from Italy, or otherwise very familiar with Italian? I need help with some names and some slang -- not contemporary but older.

Comments

[dorky]

*raises hand* I'm Italian!

[resonant]

Yay! How I love the internet!

My story is set in the 1940s. Here's what I'm looking for:

- What are three or four plausible names for men born in the 1920s?

- Of plausible English-language women's names of that time period (Betty, Dorothy, Mary/Marie, Helen, Ruth, Evelyn, Alice, Irene, Lillian, Louise, etc.), are there any that are especially charming as pronounced by people whose first language is Italian? or any that are especially ugly or ridiculous when Italians say them?

- What's reasonably polite 1940s slang for a brothel? How about impolite 1940s slang?

Thanks!

[dorky]

Important question first: you say born during the 1920s, is it early or late '20s?

Because round about that time, Fascism was the new thing in Italy and lots of parents who followed Fascism called their children accordingly.

Another question: these people are from a specific part of Italy? Or do you want just random, all-purpose names?

[resonant]

These are guys who would be in their early-to-mid-20s in 1945 -- precision is obviously not critical here -- but I'm thinking probably I'd have a personal preference for non-Fascist-inspired names. Though on the other hand I know a guy named Benito, and he had to point out the historical implications because I didn't notice them.

Random, all-purpose names would be good; I can't find a copy of the map from the Captain America movie, or any authoritative description of where all those Hydra bases might be, so I'm just going with "somewhere in Italy."

[dorky]

1 - I've found these ones: Vittorio (kind of fascist, in a way, but it means 'victory', so I guess it's all right), Glauco, Italo, Paride, Vinicio. And of course Benito, as you said.

2 - All those names are quite easy for Italian people to pronounce, as we have Italian versions of them which are quite similar. Mostly the difference is in the vowels and the facy that we usually pronounce "th" as just "t". I think the sweetest to hear would be Mary, as an Italian person of those times would probably say it as if it was a French name, with an accent on the last syllable. As for the ugly or ridiculous, I wouldn't say they would sound as such, but "Alice" and "Irene" would sound very different in Italian, even though they'd be written the same way. Alice would be [ a l i tʃ e ] and Irene would be [ i r ε n e ].

3 - The official term for brothel was "casa di tolleranza" (literally, "house of tolerance"). It was commonly referred to as bordello, casino, casa chiusa or lupanare. I would say the least polite of those terms are "bordello" and "casino" (not to be confused with the English word "casino", which in Italian becomes "casinò").

Hope it's all right! :)

[resonant]

You're amazing -- thank you!

Just out of curiosity, what does "chiusa" mean? And "lupanare"? (I'm guessing "casino" is something like "little house," and I looked up the derivation of "bordello" and got "little cottage.")

[dorky]

"Chiusa" means "closed" or "enclosed" and "lupanare" comes from the Latin word for whorehouse and it literally meant "den of the (she)wolf". :)

And "casino" comes from "little house" as you said!

[resonant]

Thanks again for your help! It's probably a weird little story that nobody will ever read, but I find that I can't do much with a character until she/he has a name.

[dorky]

Well, it's Captain America fandom, so I will read it! :)

[resonant]

Hey, I've got a draft of this story now. Would you be willing to look it over from a culture and language point of view? I can e-mail it to you if you'll share your address -- mine is resonant8(at)sbcglobal(dot)net -- or send it to you some other way if you'd rather.

I'm not actually using Italian in it, but even so, when people are talking, I don't want them to be sounding wrong, you know?

Thanks!

[dorky]

Sure! My e-mail is 00xeno00(at)gmail(dot)com

[jelazakazone]

I'm so glad you had the knowledge to weigh in. I speak Italian, but man I do not have the depth of knowledge to answer this question and I found it interesting to see what the answer was:D

[dorky]

:D It's nice to be of help! :)