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If you have the whole page i can try to verify with other words. The only thing i can suppose is "Mezza" with the meaning of "Metà " (Half), but i'm not sure.
I probably should have added more info when I first posted. This is a page from a 1750 stato dell'anime. The line reads:
"Angela Lisabetta Maria Troisi, sua nezza, e figlia di Filippo e q. Petronilla di Garofano..... yada yada .... age 11."
The woman on the (cut-off) line above her was her grandmother, aged sixty, and according to the formula of the other households, "sua nezza" describes her relationship to the head of the house (in this case her grandmother.)
In the previous censuses "nipote" was used for niece/nephew/grandchild, so this "nezza" thing is a new twist.
I've scoured the Latin books and can't find anything remotely similar and I know it's not dialect. It's bugging me that I can't find a definition.....
I, for example, didn't do it, but i just did think it wasn't the correct transcription of the word because i never heard of it ... so, i insist, "ottimo, Livio".
Contrary to popular belief, not all Italian given names have Christian or classical roots. Many names encountered in older records are almost whimsical, and some cannot be translated into Latin or any other language. In order to avoid possible mistranscription of a given name with which the research...