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CHAPTER 1

Names

Ever since Adam named the animals in Genesis 2:20, humans have given things—and people—names. Names, and the kinship relationships expressed through them, are among the most essential and universal components of identity. Personal names and surnames connect people with ancestors, places of origin, social and religious communities, and larger cultural groups, and thus contribute to the formation of both individual and communal identity. They have a taxonomic function, suggesting things—rightly or wrongly—about their bearer’s religious, social, or cultural affiliation. Some names confer power by linking an individual, even superficially, with an important family (e.g., the Kennedys, the Rothschilds). An infamous name can compel shame or fear: how many boys now are named Adolf?¹ While few people believe that nomen est omen, we still draw conclusions from people’s names.²

Naming is a fundamental way of imposing control over one’s surroundings. In the past two decades, many evangelical Christians have followed a “prosperity theology” of “name it and claim it.”³ Some medieval Jews and Christians could harness divine power by invoking supernatural names known to only a few. In traditional families, assigning someone a theophoric or festal or saint’s name is still thought to afford special access to a powerful intercessor: the patron saint or guardian angel surely will protect his or her namesake. By extension, communities named after a saint had a privileged relationship with heavenly intercessors beyond what the great majority of places could claim.

The study of names has become fashionable in recent decades, resulting in prosopographical catalogs, anthroponymic colloquiums, and onomastic or prosopographic journals in several countries. Few of these, however, look beyond documentary sources at names made visible inside churches or on humble tombstones, and even fewer consider a regional name stock across different language groups. These public visual sources have been ignored or underutilized in anthroponymic studies. In this chapter, I look at people, places, and power—Jewish and Christian personal names, hagiotoponyms and other place names, divine and demonic names—in the medieval Salento.

Personal Names

Soon after birth, children are given a personal first name that, in most cases, stays with them throughout their lives. By the Middle Ages, when infant baptism was the rule, Christian children received their names at a baptismal ceremony; his or her very existence, theologically and culturally, was linked with having a name.⁴ Jewish boys got their names at circumcision, Jewish girls on the first Sabbath after their birth or at their benediction a month later.⁵ Personal names are perpetuated after death by being given to a member of a new generation, and the practice in southern Italy, Greece, and many other places today is to give the paternal grandfather’s or grandmother’s name to the firstborn son or daughter and the maternal grandfather’s or grandmother’s name to the next child.⁶ Baptismal names might be altered during one’s lifetime by entering a monastery and acquiring a new name; in the Byzantine sphere this name commonly began with the same initial as the former name.⁷ In addition, given names might be amended or effaced by the use of nicknames, and in the later Middle Ages these nicknames often became, or were supplemented by, a surname. Our sources often reveal the personal and sometimes the family names of craftsmen and patrons, of clerics and laypeople who indicated their presence and some important elements of their identity in painted or incised texts. Names of the deceased are recorded by family or associates whose identity was somehow connected to theirs, and who therefore might indicate kinship, religion, age, or other components of identity as part of their commemoration. The most important part of being a recognized individual was, and remains, having a name, and ethnographic studies reveal that even in modern times, a Salentine baby is in a sense not really born until his or her name has been officially recorded.⁸

Jewish Names

Jews, and others, believed that there was an intimate connection between one’s name and one’s essence. The Hebrew word for soul, neshama, has as its stem the word shem, which means name.⁹ Midrashic literature contains many references to the power of names, and urges discretion in selecting a good name for a child inasmuch as the name itself might be an influence for good or for evil.¹⁰ According to the Talmud, it was meritorious to keep one’s Jewish name,¹¹ and several midrashim noted that one of the reasons the Hebrews merited liberation from Egypt—and thus communal identity as Jews—was that they kept their Jewish names.¹² Hebrew names were integral to their identity as Jews; at the same time, the Talmud recognized that many postexilic Jews had adopted the non-Jewish names found in their new environments.¹³ Acts 18:24 describes a learned Jew named Apollo who confessed Christ, undisturbed by any pagan religious connotations, and numerous epitaphs reveal that theophoric pagan names were common in antiquity.¹⁴ Apparently this continued into the Middle Ages; a thirteenth-century Ashkenazic treatise argues that Jews should not be taking the names of heathen idols or saints.¹⁵ Yet this was possible because male Jews had two names: a sacred name, the shem ha-kodesh, used in religious contexts and for such important life-cycle events as marriage and death, and a secular name, the kinnui, which could be anything at all but was often a vernacular translation of, or a name similar in sound to, the sacred name.¹⁶ A Hebrew name was required for males because it was the language of the celestial court; the angels, messengers of God, were monolingual, and the angel of death demanded one’s proper (Hebrew) name.¹⁷

The whole range of Jewish onomastic possibilities can be observed in the medieval Salento. Material evidence for local Jewish names comes exclusively from funerary inscriptions, which always record the sacred name but, unfortunately, do not postdate the tenth century, and a small number of carved synagogue texts. In order to expand this paltry data set, I also consider documentary and literary evidence from liturgical poetry, a family chronicle, letters, and a twelfth-century travel account.¹⁸ In addition, I include evidence from Bari and Trani, north of the Salento (but do not venture farther north to Siponto or inland to Venosa), and move back into the seventh/eighth century and forward into the fifteenth. Nevertheless, the sample of Jewish names remains so small that nothing can be said statistically about onomastic preferences; for this reason I have not noted how many individuals have a particular given name.

From the early period, seventh/eighth to twelfth century, special mention must be made of a Jewish “dynasty” from Oria, famous—if only legendarily—for successfully exempting their community from the conversion orders issued by the Byzantine emperors Basil I and Romanos I Lekapenos. In 1054, a genealogical chronicle (Megillat Yuhasin, “Scroll of Genealogy,” better known as Megillat Ahima‘az or the Chronicle of Ahima‘az) was completed by a family member who had settled in Capua, outside the Salento.¹⁹ Among the names associated with early medieval Oria are Ahima‘az, author of the work, and his forebears Amittai, Baruch [cf. 18, 50], Eleazar, Hassadiah, Papoleon, Shephatiah (who allegedly debated with Basil I in Constantinople),²⁰ Abdiel, Hananel, Shemu’el (Samuel) [cf. 13, 123], and Paltiel. Theophoric names ending in –el, referring to God, were especially popular in Italy.²¹ Other names from Oria include Ahima‘az’s distant relative Shabbetai Donnolo [cf. 125, 131], a tenth-century philosopher, astrologer, physician, and acquaintance of Saint Neilos of Rossano,²² as well as Abraham, Yehoshaphat, and Hodijah. The flourishing Oria Jewish community disappears from the historical record in the tenth century, probably due to the city’s destruction during Arab raids in 925, after which the ancestors of Ahima‘az scattered to Amalfi, Benevento, and Capua.²³

Additional Hebrew male names from the early period include Aaron, Amnon,²⁴ Azariah, Benjamin, Caleb,²⁵ Chiyya, David [11, 121], Elijah [10, 12], Ephraim, Evyatar, Ezekiel [123], Ezra, Isaiah, Israel, Jacob [126], Jeremiah, Joel, Jonah [18], Joseph [13, 136], Judah, Levi, Machir, Madai [14], Mali (probably Emanuel),²⁶ Meir, Meiuchas, Menachem, Menashe [11], Mordechai, Moses [9, 10, 12, 14], Natan, Nuriel, Ribai [17], Shemaria, Sheshna, Solomon, Uriel, Yafeh Mazal [16], Zadok, and the poets Zebadiah and Menachem Corizzi.²⁷ Greek and Latin names held by male Jews include Anatolius [124], Basil [134], Justus [124], Daudatus, Domnolus [125], Julius [81], Leon [121, 131], Silanus [123], Tophilo (Theophilos), Theophylact, and Ulsherago.²⁸ Many of the Hebrew names have Greek equivalents: Jehoshaphat (or Shephatiah) corresponds to Theokritos and Shemaria to Theophylact.²⁹

For the late Middle Ages, from the thirteenth to the first half of the fifteenth century, documents, diatribes, poetic acrostics, and epitaphs (only from Trani) show that many of the earlier Hebrew names were still popular. Additional ones include Adoniyah [149] (meaning “Lord”), Isaac, Menashe, Snya (?), Moses de Meli (a surname), and Tanhum [150].³⁰ These are supplemented by such new assimilated names as Astruc, Gaudinus, James, Rubi(n), Sabatino Russo (the first name comes from “shabbat”), Sabinus, Sanban, Ubene, and even one Cristio Maumet, documented in Lecce in 1447.³¹ It is interesting to note that it was a lapsed Jew with the secular name Manoforte (or Manuforte), derived from a nickname, who persuaded King Charles I of Anjou to confiscate the Talmud and Jewish liturgical books in 1270.³²

In sum, Italy had a stock of Hebrew names that were not common elsewhere: the aforementioned –el names, plus Ahima‘az, Amnon, Yehoshaphat, Natan, Shephatiah, Zadok. The latter are all names of early prophets or men associated with the Davidic line.³³ Amnon, for instance, was David’s oldest son and apparent heir—until he raped his half sister Tamar and was killed by her brother Absalom. Unlike the Ashkenazim, who originated in Italy, southern Italian Jews did not hesitate to use names that had negative connotations elsewhere.

Because Jewish women did not require a shem ha-kodesh they had unlimited onomastic possibilities. Early female names in the region are Hebrew or Greek in origin: Cassia, Erpidia [132], Esther [133],Hannah [81],Leah [16], Naomi (?), Susanna, Yocheved [17], and Zipporah [17]; later female names include Stella and Lisia.³⁴ The paucity of later names is due in part to the fact that Jewish epitaphs disappear after the tenth century and women are poorly represented in official documents. Even in the lengthy and ostensibly genealogical Chronicle of Ahima‘az, only three female names appear: Cassia (the name of two different women, one of whom was known for her beauty, disposition, and piety), Esther, and Albavera of Capua, the latter well outside our geographical range. All three are recorded as the wives of more important males. Besides Cassia, only once does a Jewish woman—or any woman—in the Salento receive a title, domina, that supplements the simplest assertion of filial or spousal kinship [81]. The lone dated Jewish epitaph in the region, that of Leah at Brindisi, was erected by her grieving father, Yafeh Mazal, who himself boasts an augurial name meaning “good fortune” equivalent to the Greek Eutychios [16].³⁵

Jewish sacred names supplement the personal name with that of the father or mother (the patronymic A son of B or matronymic C daughter of D), although this is not always attested epigraphically or in documentary sources. At least in some families, there was a tendency to reuse particular Hebrew names over time. In the ninth-to-eleventh-century “family tree” of Ahima‘az, most male names, including the author’s, appear more than once. In some cases the same names repeat in alternate generations, with the oldest son named after his paternal grandfather,³⁶ but this is not consistent. On at least one tombstone, a son has the same Latin name as his father [125]. This also occurs with Hebrew names: a ninth-century or later Aramaic epitaph from Taranto identifies the tomb of Joseph son of Joseph [136], and in the 1490s an Elijah son of Elijah is attested at Alessano and Gallipoli.³⁷ Yet there are also many cases of relatives having names of different linguistic origin. One Latin-named father (Justus) gave his son a Greek name (Anatolius) [124]; another, Silanus—whose own brother had the Hebrew name Ezekiel—named his son Samuel [123]. The family relationships attested in the sources are wife (ayshet), son (filius, ben, bar), daughter (filia, bat), and uncle/father’s brother (barbanus, ahi avi).³⁸

There is some evidence for Jewish surnames that are not simple patronymics. An early epitaph from Taranto recalls the unnamed wife of Leon son of David min Meli, probably a toponymic surname indicating his or her origin on the island of Melos [121].³⁹ Moses de Meli, of Copertino, was perhaps of the same origin as David; he had an exchange of letters in 1392 with Sabatino Russo, a fellow Jewish merchant in Lecce with a more generic surname that is now the third most common family name in Italy.⁴⁰ An unusual case of a profession used as a surname is the tenth-century⁴¹ Otrantine poet “Menachem named Corizzi,” identified more fully in another of his acrostics as “Menachem the humble, son of rabbi Mordechai, the administrator, who is strong, Amen, Corizzi, of the community of Otranto, mohel.” In addition to being one of the earliest Italian authors of Hebrew liturgical poetry, Menachem was apparently a (the?) mohel in Otranto, charged with circumcisions;⁴² one of his professional identities became a surname. Shabbetai Donnolo’s surname, the Greek Δόμνουλος, is a diminutive of Latin dominus; “little master” would be an appropriate nickname for a physician.⁴³ Yet unlike the case with Christian names, where “Rossi,” from “red,” is today the most common Italian surname,⁴⁴ nicknames rarely became surnames in Jewish communities.

Jewish surnames followed the tendency of personal names in having a vernacular equivalent. Santoro de Iosep Sacerdote⁴⁵ was surely the son of the erstwhile Joseph ha-Cohen or ha-Levi, whose distant ancestors were of the priestly class. Those with old-fashioned Hebrew first names, like Elya Nicolai of Lecce,⁴⁶ sometimes added a more Christian-sounding one. From the beginning, the Jewish civic name had a Greek, Latin, or (later) Italian equivalent: either a simple translation (Baruch, “blessing,” became Benedict; Hayyim, “life,” became Vito); a vague phonetic similarity (Pinchas–Felice); or a logical or homiletic connection (Judah, whose tribal sign in Gen. 49:9 was the lion, became Leon). These equivalents became more or less fixed by the early fourteenth century,⁴⁷ and Christians in the late medieval Salento probably knew their Jewish neighbors only by their familiar-sounding civic names.

Christian Names, Ninth to Eleventh Centuries

When we turn to medieval Christians, a much larger stock of names can be recovered from visual sources, making it unnecessary (and impractical) to consider the kinds of texts upon which we relied to enrich the corpus of Jewish names. My findings differ somewhat from those of André Jacob, who examined Salentine onomastics by drawing upon a broader range of material—inscriptions, manuscript colophons, diptychs of the dead, acts, family annals, charters, and the like—but focused exclusively on Greek names in the southern part of the Salento.⁴⁸ Jean-Marie Martin and Joanna Drell addressed more of southern Italy, not just the Terra d’Otranto, but their sources were limited to notarial documents.⁴⁹ My Database is at once larger and smaller than these earlier noteworthy efforts: it spans the whole Salento but is limited to names that were publicly visible in the form of painted or carved inscriptions and graffiti, regardless of length or content. I have divided the evidence into two broad periods: ninth to eleventh century and twelfth to fourteenth century. In most cases a specific year is not provided by the primary source and I rely on stylistic or paleographic evidence, whether of the names themselves or of the monuments with which they are associated, to assign a general date. It can be assumed that all of these names belonged to Christians even though not all are “typical” Christian names (for example, Aprilios).⁵⁰ My lists omit the names of rulers who were not based in the Salento (e.g., Charles, king of Jerusalem and Sicily [1]), but they do include clergy whose presence in the region may have been limited. Only names that can be restored with a high probability of accuracy are included.

Male names in the earlier period include Akindynos [33.D],Andrew [80.A], Aprilios [32.D, F], Arsakes (of Armenian origin) [159], Blasios [32.K], Constantine [32.I, 101], Demetrios [33.B], Eustathios [32.D], George [33.A], John [25, 33.F, 33.I, possibly 115], John Pankitzes [32.I], Leo [5, 32.A, 32.E], Leon(?) Kephalas [33.E], Magelpotus [84], Michael [33.G], Michael the African [154.A], Michael Korkouas [154.A], Nikodemos [114.A], Porphyrios [72.A], Stratigoules [32.J], Theodosius [83], Theophylact [32.A], and Vincent [32.G, 115]. The few female names recorded between the ninth and eleventh centuries are Anastasia [32.H], Anna [32.B], Chrysolea [32.A], Maria [33.J], T(h)ecla [25], and possibly Veneria [146.A].⁵¹

Among Christians who left a visible record of piety, presence, or death there are names that are Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Germanic in origin, but also many universal Christian names. John is the most commonly attested name in inscriptions, epitaphs, and graffiti between the ninth and eleventh centuries, and this accords with the “supremacy of John” noted by scholars who rely primarily on written texts.⁵² However, the other popular male names—Leo, Michael, and Constantine—differ slightly from those other results, in which Nicholas was second to John in popularity, followed by Leo and Constantine.⁵³ What factors might explain the local preference for Michael rather than Nicholas? While the cult of Nicholas was diffused in southern Italy under Byzantine domination long before the Norman translation of his remains to Bari in 1087,⁵⁴ it appears that the personal name followed more slowly, at least among the social classes documented in epitaphs and wall paintings.⁵⁵ Michael had been enormously popular among the Lombards (or Longobards) as their regional patron saint, with his cult site at Montesantangelo in northern Apulia, although his name was not especially common.⁵⁶ However, Michael had a much longer history than Nicholas of being depicted in Byzantine wall paintings, and he was included in prayers as a miracle worker and intercessor at the Last Judgment.⁵⁷ It is probably his long-standing association with healing and battling demonic forces that accounts for Michael’s earlier popularity as an augurial name.⁵⁸ Nevertheless, in the succeeding centuries Nicholas would become one of the two most common South Italian male names and one of its most important iconographic subjects.⁵⁹

A few surnames are used in the Byzantine and early Norman era, for men only:⁶⁰ Leo Kephalas [33.E], John Pankitzes [32.I], Michael Korkouas [154.A]. These early surnames belong to residents of the southernmost part of the region who enjoyed an elevated social level as bishop,⁶¹ priest, and church builder. The Kephalas family produced the emperor Basil I and were benefactors of Mount Athos.⁶² The Korkouas were notaries in Taranto whose relatives held high office in Constantinople.⁶³ The mere fact of having a surname in the eleventh century underscores the individual’s high social status, as such names begin to appear in significant numbers only in the thirteenth century.⁶⁴

Two of the early named individuals reveal information about their geographic origins, albeit not in the form of a surname. Michael “the African” must have traced his roots to North Africa [154.A];⁶⁵ Michael Korkouas “of Corone” hailed from Messenia in the Peloponnese. Additional inhabitants of the Peloponnese were transferred to Byzantine Longobardia under Leo VI,⁶⁶ and connections between southern Greece and southern Italy are also evidenced by imported ceramics.⁶⁷

Christian Names, Twelfth to Fourteenth Centuries

A great increase in the variety of men’s first names and the quantity of surnames occurs in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Not only does the name stock more than triple, but the number of attestations of many popular names multiplies noticeably: Agnus [58.B], Antony [143.E, 157.A], Asotes (of Armenian origin) [111], Azzolinus de Nestore [78.A], Bailardus [21.A, 78.C], Bartholomew [22.F], Basil [104, 153.A], Bastianus (Sebastian) [94.C], Benedict [109.A, 143.B], Bisardus [78.C], Blasius [94.E], Bosos [44.A], Calogerius [92.A], Ceccarius [66.C], Constantine [158], Cosmas [144], Cyriakus [4], Cyril [61.A], Daniel [54, 109.A], Demetrios [43.A], Dionysos [143.E], Dominic [51], Dominic de Juliano [39], Donadeus [4, 35], Dymenos [107], Espeditos [94.M], Formosus [57], Gaycierius [28.T], George [4, 24.B, 37, 55, 110, 157.G], George Longo [4], Giraldus [140.D, 144], Godfredus [57], Gosfridus [78.C], Grisius [69.A], Guarino Montefusco [48], Guidonis [21.C], Hugh [2], Iacobinus [27.A], Iaquintus [94.B, 116.A–B], Ioannikios [144], James [110], James Pipinos [80.B], John [1, 4 (x2), 36, 38, 65.A, 66.I, 76.A, 87.A, 93.B, 94.K, 96, 114.B, 141, 143.A, 143.E], John de Andrea [26.A], John Crispulus [76.A], Jonathan [86.C–D, F–G], Laurence [157.G], Laurence Vetanus [79.A], Leo [66.F, 73.B, 88.A, 94.J],Leonard [91.A], Luke [144], Magerius [93.A], Magi—os [49],Maraldus [142.A], Mari [31], Mark [66.A], Matthew [22.F, 79.C], Ma(tthias?) [95], Michael [94.K], N—Melitinos [1], Nicholas [1, 43.A, 45.A, 73.B, 79.C, 87.A, 94.A, 108.A, 161], Nicholas Castaldo [26.C], Nicholas de Marra [28.W], Nicholas Ferriaci [156.A],Nicholas Markiantos [36], Nicholas Palia [23.B], Pantoleon/Pantaleon [49, 86.C–D, 105], Paul [30], Peregrinus/Pellegrinus [36, 114.F],⁶⁸ Peter [21.C, 66.H, 94.I, 117.A], Peter Stea [94.F], Petroius [140.C], Pigonatios [45.A], Raimondo del Balzo [48], Radelchis [66.D], Richard [144], Rinaldus [28.A], Roger [21.B (a ruler), 38], Roger Moraville [82], Rosemannus [140.B], Sarulus [75.A, 76.C], Senatoros [64.A], Souré [43.A], Stephen [143.D, 155.A],Symeon [114.C–D], Tancred [58.A–B], Taphouros [114.C], Theodore [22.E, 46], Ursus [66.H], and Vitalius Ferriaci [156.A].

Compared to the earlier (Byzantine) period, almost three times as many women’s names from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries are preserved: Donna [Plate 18], Doulitzia [157.A], Eulalia [138.A], Gemma [4], Ioanna (or Jeanne) [157.A], Isabella [48], Kalia [157.C], Marciana [74.A], Margaret [157.I], Maria [137, 157.A], Rogaie [82], and Theokari [107]. There are Christian (and also Jewish) examples of men providing a tombstone for a dead wife and omitting her name while including their own [26.C, 121]; as in the earlier period, elision of the wife’s name is very frequent in family supplications.

There are about six times more Christian names, both male and female, for the later medieval period than for the earlier centuries because of the larger number of later monuments and their greater likelihood of preservation. The average number of inscriptions per monument is slightly larger in the early period; there are four sites with a large number of texts that signal multiple patrons, multiple identities inscribed within a single cult space.⁶⁹ All of these inscriptions are in Greek, a fact that merits discussion in the following chapter. In the later period, more sites attracted multiple patrons or visitors.⁷⁰ A record of multiple individuals at a single site in the ninth to eleventh centuries gives way in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries to fewer individuals, or just one, attested by name in a given monument or site. Even if the specific numbers should prove to be skewed, it seems fair to say that in all periods the percentage of inscriptions that contain a personal name is very high. In at least three cases out of four in my data set, including a name or names was a motive—perhaps the most important one—for composing an inscription or graffito.

The most popular given names for men in the twelfth- to fourteenth-century inscriptions and graffiti are John (attested 18 times), Nicholas (14 or 15), George (7), Peter (5), Leo (4), and Pantaleon (3). John remains the most popular name, catching up in the visual sources to the “supremacy” he enjoyed earlier in all sources. Nicholas has also risen in the standings, as prefigured in the documentary sources, while Leo has declined, and Michael and Constantine have dropped out of onomastic competition. George has a sudden surge, as does Peter, and Stephen and Pantaleon to a lesser degree.⁷¹ Using a larger range of written sources for a smaller geographical area, Jacob found that John and Nicholas were the most popular names in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,⁷² followed by George, Leo, and Peter.⁷³ He identified many more names in fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century sources; these continue to show a strong regional preference for John and Nicholas, followed now by Peter, Stephen, and George, with Leo far behind. Ecclesiastical tax records indicate that Nicholas was the name most commonly held by clerics in Apulia, Lucania (Basilicata), and Calabria in the early fourteenth century, followed by John and Peter,⁷⁴ but the visual sources identify only one priest named Nicholas [108.A].

The later medieval period witnessed the introduction of many names not found in the earlier visual sources. Some of these are Germanic, Norman, or Breton names previously unknown in the region (Bailardus, Bosus, Formosus, Giraldus, Godfredus, Gosfridus, Guidonis, Hugh, Leonard, Magerius, Maraldus, Pellegrinus, Radelchis, Richard, Rinaldus, Roger, Sarulus, Ursus).⁷⁵ Petrus (Peter) also arrives, probably with the Normans, but his popularity is attested more in written sources and hagiotoponyms than in dedications and epitaphs.⁷⁶ In the fourteenth century, a new stock of personal names was introduced throughout Europe in conjunction with the spread of the mendicant orders. These new names permeate the written sources before they appear in the visual record; Francis, for example, is not found in public inscriptions in the Salento before 1432 [47.D].⁷⁷ Antony is inscribed in a graffito at Taranto [143.E] and in the 1379/80 apse inscription at Vaste [157.A], but there is disagreement about whether the new popularity of this name is connected with Antony of Padua, canonized in 1232, or the much older Antony Abbot.⁷⁸ In 1372/73 we find a bishop named Cyriakus [4], the Greek equivalent of Dominic, whose name began to penetrate the Salento along with its representatives in the Dominican order.⁷⁹ The female equivalents of these new names, Kyriake and Domenica, are lacking in the local visual sources but well attested in textual documentation.

In the few female names known from the visual record, Maria was in use by the eleventh century, as it was in other Byzantine areas, although it would not become widespread in Europe until the thirteenth century.⁸⁰ For the twelfth century, Jacob found that Maria was matched by Anna as a common female name, but Anna does not survive at all in our late evidentiary corpus. Diminutives are popular among the Greek names (Doulitzia, Kalia, Eulalia).⁸¹ As with male names, Latinate female names are introduced by the twelfth century (Rogaie) and begin to dominate in the fourteenth (Margaret, Isabella, Donna). In the family dedication at Vaste, the father, Antony, and one of the daughters, Ioanna (or Jeanne), have names that could not predate the fourteenth century [157.A]. At the beginning of the fifteenth century there is still a great variety of personal names in the Salento for both men and women; the different strata of names (Lombard, Greek, Latin) were not amalgamated into a smaller, more uniform stock as was the case elsewhere in Europe by the thirteenth century.⁸²

Even families that were open to innovative personal names did not necessarily adopt a surname.⁸³ Jacob found that approximately one-third of the twelfth- and early thirteenth-century names in his textual sources were supplemented by a last name, but the proportion is lower in the visual sources, under 25 percent for the whole period of the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. Three-quarters of these surnames are found in inscriptions or graffiti written in Latin; only a handful are in Greek. This significant disparity suggests that the authors of Greek public texts were less inclined to adopt last names even when their Latin-speaking neighbors did so and even though some upper-class Greek speakers had done so in preceding centuries.

There are four distinct types of surnames: anthroponymic, in which a first name is used as a last name; nicknames, often a given name in origin; geographical; and names related to professions or crafts. Of some 1,800 surnames culled from thirteenth- and fourteenth-century documentary sources, Jean-Marie Martin found that over 50 percent were anthroponymic, 30 percent were nicknames, 15 percent were geographical, and only a small percentage were related to profession.⁸⁴ Of our nineteen male surnames, the geographical type is better represented than in Martin’s sample, with toponymic and anthroponymic surnames about equally present, but there are far fewer nicknames and professional attributes. Anthroponymic surnames include De Nestore [78.A], De Juliano [39], and probably Crispulus [76.A]. Local toponyms in our list include Leo of Nucilia (Nociglia) [66.F], Paul of Sogliano [30], and the archpriest of Latiano, George “de Horia,” presumably the nearby city of Oria [55]. More exotic in origin are Del Balzo (des Baux) [48], Moraville [82], De Marra [28.W],⁸⁵ and Melitinos [1]. The toponym “de Morciano” accompanies a supplicant at Santa Maria di Cerrate [114.F], possibly from northern Italy rather than the southern Salento.⁸⁶ Nicholas Palia identifies himself as coming from Giovinazzo, north of Bari [23.B], but his surname is unrelated to it. Longo seems to be the only local surname derived from a nickname [4], while Castaldo (from the Lombard gastaldus, representative of the king) [26.C] and Ferriaci (from the Latin for iron, a smith) [156.A] appear to be professional names. Markiantos [36] and Palia are both of unknown derivation.

In the most recent study of contemporary Italian surnames, roughly the same categories appear: augurial names culled from medieval personal names in Italian; names based on historical and literary tradition that became popular in the fifteenth century; nicknames ultimately derived from Latin personal names but used in medieval Italian (volgare) as ironic comments on an individual’s character or physiognomy; anthroponymic surnames culled from the Latin, German, Greek, and Hebrew substrata; and epithetic surnames, including patronymics or matronymics, ethnic and toponymic names, and professional names.⁸⁷ In the medieval Terra d’Otranto the epithetic name was the most common; many of the names that we might consider anthroponyms are patronymic in origin, using a first name as a second name. In southern Italy in general, the epithetic surname is still the most common, especially the patronymic plural.⁸⁸ For example, De Giorgi or Giorgio, D’Andria, and De Luca are among the top ten surnames in the modern provinces of Lecce and Taranto, and Iacobini is still attested in Lecce and Taranto.⁸⁹ Among the twenty most common surnames in all of Italy, with particular frequency in the cities of Lecce, Brindisi, and Taranto, is the toponym “Greco,”⁹⁰ reflecting the Byzantine demographics of a millennium ago. Longo, the surname of a fourteenth-century hospital builder in Andrano [4], is still popular in both Lecce and Brindisi,⁹¹ and even the decreasingly popular personal name Leo is still present as a common surname, especially in Taranto.⁹² Even today, in comparison with the rest of Italy the province of Apulia is characterized by exceptional diversity and local specificity in its surnames.⁹³

We have already noted a few disparities in onomastic preference based on the types of sources consulted, so it is worth considering whether different social levels appear in the epigraphic record versus the documentary records. If, as has been argued, the intellectual milieu—represented by commissioners and signers of books, acts, and charters—is not inclined toward innovation in the domain of names,⁹⁴ the same seems true for nonelites: with few opportunities to “make a name” for themselves and their relatives, they preferred to maintain tradition, perpetuating family identification by repeating names from previous generations. In his work on late thirteenth- to mid-fourteenth-century surnames in Bari, Martin identified laymen as most likely to adopt a surname, followed by clergy and then women⁹⁵ (female surnames are nonexistent in the Salento). I discuss in other chapters the ways in which women were present in the visual culture of the Salento, but names were not the primary vehicle.

Kinship

Kinship information is preserved in about half of the early visual sources (ninth to eleventh century) that contain fully or partly preserved names of Christians. Most common are references to a named man’s wife and child(ren), but in only three of those cases is the wife’s name given [32.A, 32.H, 146.A]. In an inscription from Brindisi, John and Thecla share equal billing as parents of their children [25]. In addition to children mentioned in connection with a wife, there are two references to children alone [32.I, 33.A], one “very dear child” [32.J], and a single child [159]; unlike contemporary Jewish epitaphs, no early medieval Christian text singles out a daughter. In one exceptional case, a named mother is associated with her unnamed child without any reference to a husband or father [32.B]. In this small sampling of ninth- to eleventh-century sources, which come from only a handful of sites, wives are recalled less often than children; twice as many wives as children are noted in the twelfth- to fourteenth-century texts. These numbers are probably too small to extrapolate larger social patterns.

In a long eleventh-century epitaph at Carpignano, the father of the deceased gives the name of his “very dear” child, Stratigoules (a diminutive of profession), but omits the name of his wife while drawing attention to his own now-illegible name [32.J]. This is the only case in the Christian Salento in which an emotional relationship is made explicit: repeated expressions of love and grief supplement a list of all the relatives, friends, and slaves who will miss the dead boy. In other texts, relatively unemotional exhortations to God or the Virgin or a saint to remember the speaker or his or her loved one are supplemented by pleas to passersby to pray for the “speaker” or for the commemorated deceased [156.A].⁹⁶ All the attempts to solicit participation in the named individuals’ salvation come from the twelfth- to fourteenth-century visual evidence.

A greater range of family relationships is documented in the later visual material. There are references to parents [1.A, 35], a father and mother [153.A], and a brother [94.A]. Men are often identified as the son of a named father, and one identifies himself in relation to his grandfather [94.K]. The male line is by far the best-documented kinship category. One named man shares a tomb with a widow, but their relationship to each other and to the author of the inscription is not specified [107]. A wife is often cited but not usually named (in [1.A], her name is now lost). In connection with a husband/father, one unnamed wife and son merit collective mention [24.B], a wife and unspecified child(ren) three [43.A, 44, 143.B], and motherless children once [33.A]. The only time a wife and children are fully identified by relationship and name is in the 1379/80 apse at Vaste, where the figures’ proportions also reinforce the family relationships [157.A].⁹⁷ The depiction of family groups is very rare, but the Greek-language patrons or the artist at Vaste may have been inspired to depict the whole family based on precedents in large Roman-rite churches, such as Santa Maria del Casale outside Brindisi, where numerous couples and family groups are shown adoring the Virgin and Child [28.D, G, I, Q, R, U; Plates 4, 5]. Another man and woman, presumably a married couple, kneel and stand to the left of an unusual scene, in Massafra, of Christ being led to school by his mother⁹⁸ [63.A; Plate 12]. At the crypt church of the archangel Michael at Li Monaci, an embracing couple depicted on the ceiling [43.C; Plate 9] has been identified as the “soldier Souré and his wife” named in the apse dedicatory inscription [43.A], but this is very unlikely: the couple is far from the dedicatory text and cannot be seen by someone reading it; there are no precedents for depicting patrons in anything but a devotional or supplicating posture; and patronal images are seldom found on church ceilings.⁹⁹ The paucity of visual examples underscores that it was mainly through words, not images, that familial and emotional relationships could best be expressed.

Visualizing Names

Names often have a visual aspect that draws the reader’s attention. Names in all kinds of texts are often divided so that they occupy more visual space, usually two lines; examples include Leon/tos (Leo) and his wife Chryso/lea in the 959 inscription at Carpignano [32.A], Domin/icus de Juliano at Ceglie [39], and Ni/cholas son of Vitalius Fe/rriaci at Vaste [156]. In Hebrew texts, the “son of” or “daughter of” that is almost always part of the name marks the line division. In all three local languages, a name may also be emphasized by its placement at the beginning or end of a line of text (Souré [43.A], Nicholas de Marra [28.W]). In Leah’s epitaph, her father’s name is emphasized this way while hers is centered, a visually less prominent position [16.A]. Nicholas of Sternatia’s name occupies both the end and the beginning of lines in his dedicatory inscription [108.A]. Multiple ligatures also draw the eye to those words in a block of text: in the dedicatory inscription at San Vito dei Normanni, the principal patron’s and painters’ names are condensed with triple ligatures—double ligatures are far more common—and thus seem darker and more prominent against the white background than do the other names [109.A]. John of Ugento, who built a church at Acquarica del Capo, has his name perfectly centered, both vertically and horizontally, in the dedicatory inscription at the center of the west wall [1]; Antony in the Vaste apse is centered horizontally [157.A], and the surname Moraville appears on Roger’s column in the exact center, the fourth line of a seven-line text [82]. Anna is centralized in the Latin epitaph at Oria but Hannah is not in the Hebrew one [81].

Finally, it is very common to inscribe a name so that it abuts a sacred figure. This is the case for both Leon/tos and Chryso/lea at Carpignano, where half of each name nearly touches the throne of Christ [32.A]. At the other end of the same crypt, the dead Stratigoules’s name comes close to the right arm of Saint Christine, a proximity not vouchsafed his father’s name in a different quadrant of the inscription [32.J]; perhaps the proximity of names and saints was understood to benefit of the deceased. This text also emphasizes certain lines by means of a change in color of both background and script. Spotlighted in white letters are “with Nicholas the wise,” plus six more lines on the viewer’s left; to the right of the standing Saint Christine is “saints seen here, the all-” (“-immaculate Lady Theotokos and Nicholas of Myra” are on the next line). The striking color change draws the viewer’s attention to Nicholas and the Virgin, who are also painted in the soffit of the arcosolium and therefore present both visually and verbally at the tomb of Stratigoules. While such coloristic emphasis is atypical, it is clear that naming was not exclusively a verbal phenomenon; identities also could be announced and reinforced by visual means.¹⁰⁰

Place Names

Jewish names have left no traces in local toponymics apart from references to streets or neighborhoods in which Jews formerly lived.¹⁰¹ These often date to the fifteenth century or later, when Jews were required to live in special enclaves at the edges of towns rather than throughout the habitat, as was generally the case in the Middle Ages.¹⁰² Therefore, the vast majority of information about medieval Jewish onomastics concerns personal names. For Christians, however, personal names and place names overlapped because both toponyms and given names were often the names of saints. Given the importance of names in general, the tenacity of toponyms, and the potential for places to forge communal identity, it is worth considering the entire region and not only sites in the Database.

The Italic inhabitants of what would become the Salento—Messapians, Bruttians, Sallentines—gave descriptive or evocative names to such specific sites as Brindisi (from the Indo-European for “horn,” the shape of the city’s harbor), Diso (“fort”), Rudiae (“red earth”), Manduria (“horse”), Vaste, and possibly Lecce, Ugento, Taranto, Oria, and Otranto.¹⁰³ From the ancient Greek colonies in Magna Graecia come such geonyms as Gallipoli (“beautiful city”) and Leuca (“white soil”), and more sites were named after the Byzantine reconquest (Calimera, “good day”; Alliste, “the beautiful”). Others took their names from individual ancestors (Alessano, from Alexios) or families, including the Zurlo of Zollino and the Galati who settled Galátone and San Pietro in Galatina.¹⁰⁴ Many Greek toponyms are identifiable by their oxytonic accent, including Castrì (from κάστρο), Seclì (“pile of stones”), and Strudà (uncertain origin).

By the third century BCE the Latins had conquered all of southern Italy, and a large number of Salentine toponyms derive from the personal names or surnames of early Roman landholders. Most of these end today in -ano, from the original Latin -anum: Carpignano (from Carpinius, Calpinius, or Calpurnius), Corigliano (Corelius), Martano (Martus). Crispiano derives from Crispius, Miggiano probably from a landowner named Aemilius or Midius.¹⁰⁵ Further Latinisms include Grottaglie (“grotto”), Ortelle (“garden”), and Mottola (“elevation”). Others are phytotoponyms, such as Faggiano (from “beech”) and Nociglia (“walnut”).¹⁰⁶ Specchia della Mendolea, the possible home of a priest [79.C] and the place where a Hebrew medical manuscript was copied and illuminated in 1415, was an elevation notable for its almonds.¹⁰⁷ Casole, south of Otranto, site of the great Orthodox monastery of San Nicola founded by the Normans in 1099, derives from the ancient Latin “hut.” Quattro Macine, excavated in recent years by the University of Salento [98–103], appears to have been named for its industrial specialization (“four mills”).¹⁰⁸ Despite a sustained Lombard presence, the region has few Germanic toponyms. A possible reminiscence of Muslim raids is Racale (Arabic “village”),¹⁰⁹ but it was more likely named for Herakleia, in Pontos (Asia Minor), from which colonists were brought to settle the area near Gallipoli after the Arabs deported the population of nearby Ugento to Africa in 876.¹¹⁰ A memory of a Slavic presence is preserved in San Vito degli Schiavoni,¹¹¹ known since the nineteenth century as San Vito (or Santovitu) dei Normanni.

Hagiotoponyms

In addition to these largely anthroponymic and nature-based toponyms, many places in the Salento are named for the saint around whose church or monastic complex the settlement grew. Such hagiotoponyms are evidence of the dispersed nature of the medieval habitation, where a cult site might serve a number of isolated rural dwellers before becoming the nucleus of a new village.¹¹² Of some 360 medieval villages identified in the province of Lecce alone, at least 43 are hagiotoponyms named for saints, the Virgin, or Christ.¹¹³ Yet it is difficult to compile a comprehensive list of regional hagiotoponyms because it is rarely clear whether a textual source refers to a village, a neighborhood, a beach, a tower, or a cult site around which villages might develop. In the following list, I attempt to include only towns and villages (casalia). From the fourteenth century onward, the successively smaller administrative subdivisions (pictagia, neighborhoods, contained vicinia) of cities like Lecce and Nardò were uniformly hagiotoponyms named after neighborhood churches.¹¹⁴ Including such cult sites yields a much higher percentage of saints’ names than in earlier periods. Nevertheless, at the end of the Middle Ages communal identity was connected inextricably with the name of a saint (or other holy person) regardless of whether one had the same personal name.

Extant hagiotoponyms cannot communicate the rich array of earlier village dedications because so many sites were abandoned in the late medieval period or agglomerated into modern towns and cities.¹¹⁵ I have compiled a list of over forty medieval Salentine hagiotoponyms,¹¹⁶ which are Anglicized or Latinized as follows (number of sites follows if greater than one): Andrew, Anne, Barbara, Bartholomew, Benedict, Blasius, Cassian, Cataldus, Caesarius, Cosmas, Costantina (?), Danactus, Demetrius, Donatus, Elijah (2), Elizabeth, Emilianus, Euphemia, George (4), Helena, James (3), John (5), Laurence, Lucy, Mark (2), Martin, Marzanus, Michael, including Angelus (4), Nicholas (5), Pancratius, Paul, Peter (6?), Phocas, Potitus, Praexedonia (?), Simon, Stephen, Susanna, Theodore, Three Hebrews (“Trium Puerorum”), Victor, and Vitus (2).

Throughout Italy, hagiotoponyms recall saints of the early church; rarely are places named for Saint Francis or Saint Dominic, even as those personal names grew in popularity.¹¹⁷ Mario Villani asserted that southern Italian place names replicated toponomastic preferences elsewhere in Italy but in a different order of frequency. The ten most common hagiotoponyms in Italy are Peter (643), Martin (160), John (128), Michael (or Angelus, 120), Laurence (79), George (68), Andrew (65), Stephen (61), Nicholas (50), and Vito (49),¹¹⁸ but only Peter, John, Nicholas, George, Michael, James, Mark, Vitus, and Elijah (Elias) are used more than once as place names in the Salento. Nicholas and to a lesser degree Elijah are thus over-represented locally, while Martin is scarcely present as a toponym even though there were many churches dedicated to him.¹¹⁹ This toponymic disparity parallels the one between the local name stock and that in Italy more generally.

Salento hagiotoponyms evidence a special devotion to Saint Peter: San Pietro in Lama and San Pietro Vernotico, both thriving small towns today; San Pietro in Galatina, now simply Galatina; and the extinct casalia of San Pietro de Hispanis,¹²⁰ San Pietro de lacu Iohannis,¹²¹ and probably San Pietro in Bevagna, whose homonymous church still stands. The popularity of Petrine place names is due in part to local legends about the apostle’s sojourn in Apulia en route to Rome,¹²² even though most of the sites with his name date only to the Middle Ages. In any case, Peter is, after the Virgin, the most widely diffused hagiotoponym throughout Italy,¹²³ so his prominence cannot be attributed merely to local factors.

Most hagiotoponyms commemorate universal saints, but a number of less familiar and even unknown saints’ names are also attested locally. A rare Old Testament hagiotoponym (in addition to Elijah) is Casale Trium Puerorum, now San Crispieri, a reference to the Three Hebrew Children placed into the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel.¹²⁴ Caesarius probably is not the sixth-century bishop of Arles, but a deacon from Terracina (Sicily) who was sewn into a sack and cast into the sea;¹²⁵ Danactus (Dana) was a martyr from Illyricum who met the same fate after first being chopped into pieces.¹²⁶ Emilianus—unknown in modern Italy, but attested near Otranto—could be one of a number of saints with that name; Potitus was an early martyr executed in northwestern Apulia.¹²⁷ There is no record of a saint named Praexedonia, a hagiotoponym attested near Aurio, although Santa Praxedis exists as a Roman cult, and Rome may also be behind a Santa Co(n)stantina. It is unlikely that these uncommon toponyms represent the collective choice of a community. More likely they reflect individual preferences as the titular saints of privately owned churches around which hamlets or villages later developed.

Popular personal names and hagiotoponyms in the Salento generally coincide, with one interesting exception. Leo, a name used by all three faiths in the medieval Salento and that remained popular throughout the Middle Ages, never appears as a hagiotoponym, possibly because the earliest sainted Leo dates only to the fifth century. The universally renowned John and Nicholas outpace all rivals as both personal names and toponyms. Yet while a male resident of the Salento had a very good chance of being named some variant of Nicholas (Nicola, Niccolò), an inhabitant of Trium Puerorum was highly unlikely to bear the name Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego, just as residents of Naples were never named for their patron saint, Januarius.¹²⁸ Local cults had little influence on naming patterns except when the local titular saint was also a prominent universal saint.¹²⁹

To a certain degree, medieval onomastics are indexical of piety. Every place named for a saint signifies devotion to that sacred figure at some past date; nevertheless, hagiotoponyms were and are only a small percentage of all Apulian place names.¹³⁰ Particular devotion might also inspire a parent to name a child after a saint, and while we might think this was desirable—an extra layer of infant protection—it was not done consistently. Chrysolea [32.A] and Aprilios [32.D, F] at Carpignano are two of the earliest medieval Greek names that demonstrate how parental preferences and other traditions might favor other types of names. Similarly, Jewish anthroponymy demonstrates a willingness by some to invent novel monikers even if most parents adhered to familiar scriptural names.

Supernatural Names

Among the distinctive features of male Jewish names in the Salento was their frequent ending in -el, a reference to God; local Christian equivalents included Theodosius, Theophylact, and Theodore. According to Sefer Yetzirah, on which Oria’s Shabbetai Donnolo wrote an important commentary, God created the world by manipulating the letters in his own divine name.¹³¹ In fact, the Lord was believed to have many names, including the Tetragrammaton—so awesome that it was never to be pronounced explicitly—and others composed of seventy-two or forty-two letters or syllables.¹³² All of these names were enormously powerful, capable of effecting miracles if properly invoked by knowledgeable practitioners.¹³³ Moses, Jesus, and Simon Magus knew the names, and they were available to later epigones in the corpora of esoteric texts that included the Jewish Hekhalot and Merkavah literature and the (probably) Christian Testament of Solomon.¹³⁴ The Chronicle of Ahima‘az identifies the Book of Righteousness (Sefer ha-Yashar), parts of which survive in the Cairo Genizah, as containing magical instructions for employing the divine name.¹³⁵

Ahima‘az’s ancestor Hananel temporarily restored his brother Papoleon to life by inserting a parchment with the name of God under his tongue; “the Name resurrected him” until the parchment was removed.¹³⁶ God’s name also was required for successful exorcisms. When Shephatiah, another ancestor, cured the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Basil I in Constantinople, he adjured the demon who afflicted her “in the Name of ‘He who dwells high aloft,’ and in the Name of ‘He who created the earth with His wisdom,’ in the name of ‘He who created the mountains and the sea,’ and in the Name of ‘He who suspends earth upon emptiness’ … come out in the Name of God.”¹³⁷ The repetition of biblical phrases underscores how frequently the concept of the holy name appears in Scripture: the name of God is God.

Christians used the name of God in countless liturgies, hymns, and rituals, and in the sixth century Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite produced an influential treatise on divine names.¹³⁸ Two local exorcisms that guard against devastating hail begin with “the great name of (all-powerful) God), and ¹³⁹

In the late antique Testament of Solomon, well known in the Middle Ages, a demon refuses to give its name to the king because that knowledge will permit Solomon to bind not only that malefactor but others as well; nevertheless, wise Solomon prevails and becomes a model for later practitioners. An exorcist needed to know all of a demon’s names in order to counter them with powerful angelic names.¹⁴⁰ The omission of the demons’ names from the Last Judgment scene at Santo Stefano in Soleto renders them unavailable for control by their nameless victims, identified by their sins, as well as by their viewers [113.B].¹⁴¹ The dangerously powerful names of God and of demons are not found in public art.

Names and Identity

Let us conclude with the late fourteenth-century apse inscription from Santi Stefani in Vaste [157.A]. The personal names recorded there—Antony, Doulitzia, Maria, and Ioanna (Jeanne)—reveal both continuity in onomastic fashion (Maria) and novelty (Antony, Ioanna). Long after the end of Byzantine domination, only one name in this Greek inscription is unambiguously Greek (Doulitzia). No surname is indicated despite the late date, which suggests the family’s nonelite social status. The fact that names of all members of the family are included makes this text unique among medieval Salentine visual sources. The toponym Nuci (Nociglia) and the location of the church speak to the agricultural roots of many local place names and the ancient Messapian origins of a few. The supplication situates the apse figures in a family and community context at a specific moment in time, the Byzantine year 6888. It underscores that names and kinship are among the core elements of medieval identity, which involved both persons and places. What, then, should we make of Kalia, Margaret, Stephen, and Donna, who are identified by name but not by kinship [157.C, I, K, M; Plate 18]? Perhaps they are related to George, son of Lawrence [157.G], and to Antony and his family in the apse [157.A], and this is a single-family cult site. The single women may all be independent widows, although this seems unlikely. In subsequent chapters I shall have more to say about these figures’ appearance, their status, and their painted expressions of piety.

Perhaps the most important aspect of names was the belief, shared by Jews and Christians alike, that names held power. Receiving an individual name at baptism afforded protection, and only named, baptized children could hope to enter heaven.¹⁴² Names could affect one’s future, and changing a name might fool demons or the angel of death, who summoned a person by name.¹⁴³ Orthodox individuals entering a new life in a monastery or convent often received a new name. Foremost among the powerful names were the divine ones, only some of which were accessible to regular Christians and Jews.

Anthroponymy is informative, but it has its limits. What does it mean to say someone has a “Greek” or “Latin” or, for that matter, a “Jewish” name? Someone named [M]araldus is remembered in a Greek supplication in a poorly preserved apse at Taranto [142.A], but was Maraldus a Lombard, a Norman, a Swabian, or an Angevin? In fact, he was not necessarily a “Latin” at all; people could change their names in order to fit better into society, and ambitious men adopted Latin-sounding names in the late eleventh century in order to rise in the new Norman political hierarchy.¹⁴⁴ A name alone reveals little about the origin or cultural background of its bearer: after all, who would have supposed that Cristio Maumet of Lecce was a Jew? His name had to be supplemented by ebreo, an ethnic signifier, as well as by his place of habitation, Lecce.¹⁴⁵ Some onomastic patterns are socially or culturally circumscribed, but names are only distorting mirrors of the cultural background of their possessors. Similarly, place names tell us about the foundation of a site but not about subsequent changes. Quattro Macine may not always have had four mills, and a hagiotoponym like San Pietro in Galatina does not indicate that in the later Middle Ages the town came to be associated with a different saint, Paul.

When toponyms are used as a shorthand for a place’s inhabitants, it is easy for outsiders to believe that all of them share certain characteristics. Names, in such cases, are not specific to individuals, but elide unique qualities and become generalized but potentially powerful labels. The early modern inhabitants of Alessano and Carpignano were called by outsiders Sciuteì or Sçiudèu, Jews, with all the pejorative implications this term had in sixteenth-century southern Italy.¹⁴⁶ In many ways, names were (and are) the essence of group identity: they are usually assigned by others; they assume greater and lesser importance in different situations; and they can be altered if necessary. Giving someone a name, a nickname, or another label signifies power over that individual’s place in a family or community,¹⁴⁷ or even an attempt to create certain outcomes beyond the terrestrial world. Even if onomastics cannot provide all the reliable information we would like, their study tells us more than we would otherwise know about the medieval Salento. We can now look beyond names to their contexts, beginning with the languages in which names and much other information are communicated.