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BillieDeKid wrote:I believe Lupo is the nickname for his line of Dovico's. Lupo means wolf. My personal family line has Bava's. To differentiate one of the families is listed (on all documents I've found) as Bava Cornacchio. Cornacchio means black bird. The other line of Bava's is listed only as Bava. I checked with a distant cousin in Italy and he confirmed that Cornacchio is the nickname.
Hope this helps
Billie,
In actual fact cornacchia means 'crow', so it IS a black bird, but not a blackbird if you see what I mean....
A blackbird is called a MERLO (pron: mairlow)
While a cornacchio is a type of projectile - a bullet!
elba wrote:
Billie,
In actual fact cornacchia means 'crow', so it IS a black bird, but not a blackbird if you see what I mean....
A blackbird is called a MERLO (pron: mairlow)
While a cornacchio is a type of projectile - a bullet!
YIKES!!! I better take another look at the documents! Thanks for catching that Elba and thanks for the clarification. I'll post back with the actual nic........maybe I'll post the document so the original poster can see what I'm talking about.
Here is one of the documents and it looks like Cornacchia. This is an 1812 birth act, at the top you will see the father of the child listed as Bruno Bava Cornacchia (Cornacchia being the nic.)
Thanks for the help on the nickname. FWIW, yours looks like an o to me. It looks more like the o on Brognaturo or giorno than the a on Calabria or sua. No? (Or maybe I just think a bullet sounds more interesting as the basis for a nickname than a crow.)
I agree, a projectile sounds more interesting than a bird!! I had contacted this relative before he saw the document and he knew which family I was referring to and confirmed it was the bird.
It was the custom that sometimes, a branch of the family would take another name to differentiate them from another branch. This is understandable since the naming conventions were such that there were a slew of folks with the same first and last name. In this case, the surname of some members of the family was changed in the mid 1800s when some of the family left Piraino (where the surname was recorded as Cusma Dovico Lupo) and moved to Gioiosa. At that time you see the official records using Dovico Lupo. There are many many double (and triple) surnames in the area at that time. I, too, am a descendant of this family, but my line took the female route in the mid 1800s. Note that the females kept their names throughout their lives.
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