Urbanonyms and Their Linguistic Properties in Italian

Abstract

The goal of this article is to offer an overview of Italian urbanonyms by analyzing the grammatical and lexical properties of urbanonyms from four cities (Rome, Naples, Milan, and Venice). A classification is offered via data extracted from each city’s PagineGialle ‘Yellow Pages’ street directories, from which three key results emerge. First, Italian urbanonyms mostly involve two distinct constructions: nominal compounds (e.g., Piazza Grande ‘Great Square’) and genitive phrases (e.g., Arco dei Volsci ‘Volsci’s Arc’). Each construction can involve two or more “layered” generic terms (e.g., via, san in Via San Francesco). Secondly, generic terms attested in Italian urbanonyms can feature both “culture-general” items (e.g., via ‘street’) and cultureand city-specific items (e.g., lungotevere ‘Tiber riverside’, naviglio ‘navigable canal’). Thirdly, urbanonyms can carry commemorative but possibly also descriptive (“appellative”) semantic functions. The article concludes by discussing how these results inform current research on urbanonyms.