¹ Cf. the discussions in Vockeradt, Lehrbuch der italienischen Sprache §§330, 331 (Berlin, 1878); Zambaldi, Grammatica della lingua italiana 67 (Milano, n.d.); Fornaciari, Grammatica della lingua italiana 141 (8th ed., Firenze, 1933); Trabalza and Allodoli, La grammatica degli italiani 89 (1st ed., Firenze, 1934); and in numerous other normative and school grammars, a résumé of the dicta of some of which is given by V. Cioffari, Italica 14.95 (1937).

² It is not our purpose to treat here of the use of the definite article with Christian names, especially feminine (la Maria, la Giannetta; in NIt. also extended to masculine names: il Renzo); for a discussion of this common phenomenon, which is also present in other Romance languages, cf. Meyer-Lübke, Grammaire des langues romanes 3. §150.

³ Boccaccio, Decameron 4.9 (ed. A. F. Massèra, Bari, 1927).

⁴ Decam. 9.4.

⁵ Decam. 9.1.

⁶ E.g. the Novellino; Ricordano Malispini's Storia fiorentina; Dino Compagni's Cronaca; G. Villani's Cronaca; F. Sacchetti's Novelle; etc.

⁷ Cf. Augusto Gaudenzi, Sulla storia del cognome a Bologna nel sec. XIII, Bollettino dell' istituto storico italiano (henceforth abbreviated BISI) 19.1–160 (1897), for an exhaustive discussion of the problems connected with the history of the family name in medieval Italy; for the use of the article, cf. especially 20, 25–9.

⁸ Cf. Gaudenzi, BISI 19.17, concerning this type of ellipsis. The above examples are all taken from Malispini's Storia fiorentina (ed. Livorno, 1830).

⁹ Novellino §32 (ed. E. Sicardi, Livorno, 1919).

¹⁰ Decam. 4.7.

¹¹ Sacchetti, Novelle 183–5, etc.

¹² Sacchetti, Novelle 98, 108.

¹³ Decam. 9.5.

¹⁴ Decam. 9.1.

¹⁵ Decam. 8.8.

¹⁶ Gaudenzi, BISI 19.54.

¹⁷ Sacchetti, Novella 278; il Pistoia passim in this novella.

¹⁸ Cellini, Vita 41 (page references are to the Marinelli edition, Milano, 1931); il Firenzuola is referred to several times in this and the following sections.

¹⁹ Although, according to Gaudenzi, place-names originally gave rise to family names only through adjectives derived therefrom and used as modifiers (e.g. Giovanni Cremonese, Fillio Medicínese; BISI 19.70), nevertheless the examples cited above and many others point also to the entrance of place-names into the field of family names through their use as nicknames.

²⁰ Masuccio Salernitano, Il Novellino 83 (ed. A. Mauro, Bari, 1940); il Veneziano passim in this novella (no. 9).

²¹ Cellini, Vita 135, 204.

²² Machiavelli, Lettere familiari §225 (ed. E. Alvisi, Firenze, 1883); also Cellini, Vita 71.

²³ Cellini, Vita 254.

²⁴ Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi: Lettere di una gentildonna fiorentina del secolo XV ai figliuoli esuli, pubblicate da Cesare Guasti, Firenze, 1877.

²⁵ E.g. in such words as Bembo's Prose della volgar lingua (written ca. 1515, published 1525), Castiglione's Il Cortegiano (1524), Trissino's Epistola a Papa Clemente (1524) and Il Castellano (1529), etc.

²⁶ A leading force in the development of the Italian standard language in the 16th century; for a discussion with frequent reference to its linguistic influence, cf. Toffanin, Il Cinquecento 84–148 (Milano, 1929).

²⁷ Lorenzo de' Medici, La Caccia col Falcone, stanza 13, in his Opere 2.24 (ed. A. Simioni, Bari, 1913–4). At present such a construction as il Rossi Giovanni is characteristic only of legal use, or else humorous.

²⁸ R. Barbiera, Immortali e Dimenticati 323 (Milano, 1901).

²⁹ Cf. Meyer-Lübke, Grammaire des langues romanes 3 §150; Brunot, Histoire de la langue française 3.425. Nyrop, in his Grammaire historique de la langue française, vol. 5 (Syntaxe), apparently makes no mention of this interesting minor detail.

³⁰ Page references are to the edition of Alfieri's Vita, Giornali, Lettere by E. Teza Firenze, 1861.

³¹ As pointed out by Trabalza and Allodoli, La grammatica degli italiani 89.

³² All references to Fogazzaro's works are to the definitive edition by P. Nardi, Milano, 1931 ff.

³³ The omission before Colombo is undoubtedly due to the historical prominence of Christopher Columbus, not to any desire to avoid confusion with (il) colombo ‘(the) dove’; we have 16th-century attestations of il Colombo (referring to a certain Alessandro C.) in Parabosco's Diporti 12 ff. (ed. G. Gigli and F. Nicolini, Bari, 1912) and elsewhere.

³⁴ It will be seen that the names of painters and men of letters came to lose the definite article (as a result of its omission both with names of celebrities and with those of foreigners, under one or both of which categories such names would naturally come) at a relatively early period; contrary, therefore, to the interpretation offered by L. Spitzer (Italienische Umgangssprache 11–2, fn. 1) that the use of the article indicates par excellence a ‘knight of the spirit’ : 'Wenn Fogazzaro S. 32 [i.e. Malombra 39 in Nardi's edition, 1931] gefragt wird: Voi siete il Corrado Silla? wissen wir sofort, dass wir mit einem Ritter des Geistes zu tun haben.' Such an interpretation of this passage from Malombra is, furthermore, based upon a misprint: Nardi points out (page 702 of his edition) that the original and correct reading is Voi siete il signor Corrado Silla? which became corrupted in later editions. In any case, il Corrado Silla would be an exceptional case and as much out of harmony with normal Italian usage (which would call for omission of the article when the family name is preceded by the given name) as Alfieri's dell' Annibal Caro cited above.

³⁵ Cf. the variation in usage in Borgese's critical work on d'Annunzio (Napoli, 1909), for example: in the first two sections, of biographical and narrative nature, the definite article is much less frequently used with d'Annunzio and other names than it is in the third section, which is primarily critical in content.

³⁶ An interesting example of this is in Fogazzaro's Un' idea di Ermes Torranza: the old poet Torranza is referred to throughout as Torranza (in conversational style; he is presented from the emotional standpoint of the heroine) except in one place, where the author speaks of him in more objective style from the point of view of a literary critic, using the article: . . . della strofa in cui il Torranza parla a certa gente del proprio ideale (Racconti 42).

³⁷ Personal observation, confirmed in private conversation by Professors G. Bonfante and R. Poggioli (to whom I am indebted for criticism and suggestions).

³⁸ In such works (chosen at random) as Matilde Serao's Il paese di Cuccagna (1891), Italo Svevo's Senilità (1898), G. A. Borgese's Rubò (1921), Ignazio Silone's Fontamara (1933), Aldo Palazzeschi's Il Palio dei Buffi (1937); the ‘intimate’ biography by Tom Antongini, Vita segreta di Gabriele d'Annunzio (1938); the speeches, aimed at theatrical effect, of certain political figures; etc.

³⁹ Especially in the works of such violent and emotional critics as Giovanni Papini, in whose 24 Cervelli (1912) and Stroncature (1916), for example, the definite article is sometimes used with the family name of certain persons, but more often not.

⁴⁰ Milano, 1929–35.

Another type of construction, with the definite article prefixed to a name (given or family), which it is not our intention to discuss here is the use of an author's name to indicate a book written by him: vuoi prestarmi il Dante? ‘do you want to lend me the copy of Dante?‘