Children's First-names in Italy during the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

The system of assigning multiple first-names which spread in Tuscany from the end of the fourteenth century onwards constitutes an excep tion in contemporary Europe. Its orientation and rationale therefore merit detailed examination. The concern to bring together familial tra dition and respect for the saints within the first-name of a baptised infant clearly influenced the first two first-names conferred upon the newborn child. However, the appearance of an additional first-name, one which established a link with a local saint, Romolo, and which was, after 1470, systematically given to every baptised child in Flor ence and later in all Tuscany under Florentine jurisdiction, responded to a new exigency: the need to affirm the political and civic identity of every child.