identity, it is worth considering the entire region and not only sites in the Database.
The Italic inhabitants of what would become the Salento—Messapians, Bruttians, Sallentines—gave descriptive or evocative names to such specific sites as Brindisi (from the Indo-European for “horn,” the shape of the city’s harbor), Diso (“fort”), Rudiae (“red earth”), Manduria (“horse”), Vaste, and possibly Lecce, Ugento, Taranto, Oria, and Otranto.103 From the ancient Greek colonies in Magna Graecia come such geonyms as Gallipoli (“beautiful city”) and Leuca (“white soil”), and more sites were named after the Byzantine reconquest (Calimera, “good day”; Alliste, “the beautiful”). Others took their names from individual ancestors (Alessano, from Alexios) or families, including the Zurlo of Zollino and the Galati who settled Galátone and San Pietro in Galatina.104 Many Greek toponyms are identifiable by their oxytonic accent, including Castrì (from κάστρο), Seclì (“pile of stones”), and Strudà (uncertain origin).
By the third century BCE the Latins had conquered all of southern Italy, and a large number of Salentine toponyms derive from the personal names or surnames of early Roman landholders. Most of these end today in -ano, from the original Latin -anum: Carpignano (from Carpinius, Calpinius, or Calpurnius), Corigliano (Corelius), Martano (Martus). Crispiano derives from Crispius, Miggiano probably from a landowner named Aemilius or Midius.105 Further Latinisms include Grottaglie (“grotto”), Ortelle (“garden”), and Mottola (“elevation”). Others are phytotoponyms, such as Faggiano (from “beech”) and Nociglia (“walnut”).106 Specchia della Mendolea, the possible home of a priest [79.C] and the place where a Hebrew medical manuscript was copied and illuminated in 1415, was an elevation notable for its almonds.107 Casole, south of Otranto, site of the great Orthodox monastery of San Nicola founded by the Normans in 1099, derives from the ancient Latin “hut.” Quattro Macine, excavated in recent years by the University of Salento [98–103], appears to have been named for its industrial specialization (“four mills”).108 Despite a sustained Lombard presence, the region has few Germanic toponyms. A possible reminiscence of Muslim raids is Racale (Arabic “village”),109 but it was more likely named for Herakleia, in Pontos (Asia Minor), from which colonists were brought to settle the area near Gallipoli after the Arabs deported the population of nearby Ugento to Africa in 876.110 A memory of a Slavic presence is preserved in San Vito degli Schiavoni,111 known since the nineteenth century as San Vito (or Santovitu) dei Normanni.
Hagiotoponyms
In addition to these largely anthroponymic and nature-based toponyms, many places in the Salento are named for the saint around whose church or monastic complex the settlement grew. Such hagiotoponyms are evidence of the dispersed nature of the medieval habitation, where a cult site might serve a number of isolated rural dwellers before becoming the nucleus of a new village.112 Of some 360 medieval villages identified in the province of Lecce alone, at least 43 are hagiotoponyms named for saints, the Virgin, or Christ.113 Yet it is difficult to compile a comprehensive list of regional hagiotoponyms because it is rarely clear whether a textual source refers to a village, a neighborhood, a beach, a tower, or a cult site around which villages might develop. In the following list, I attempt to include only towns and villages (casalia). From the fourteenth century onward, the successively smaller administrative subdivisions (pictagia, neighborhoods, contained vicinia) of cities like Lecce and Nardò were uniformly hagiotoponyms named after neighborhood churches.114 Including such cult sites yields a much higher percentage of saints’ names than in earlier periods. Nevertheless, at the end of the Middle Ages communal identity was connected inextricably with the name of a saint (or other holy person) regardless of whether one had the same personal name.
Extant hagiotoponyms cannot communicate the rich array of earlier village dedications because so many sites were abandoned in the late medieval period or agglomerated into modern towns and cities.115 I have compiled a list of over forty medieval Salentine hagiotoponyms,116 which are Anglicized or Latinized as follows (number of sites follows if greater than one): Andrew, Anne, Barbara, Bartholomew, Benedict, Blasius, Cassian, Cataldus, Caesarius, Cosmas, Costantina (?), Danactus, Demetrius, Donatus, Elijah (2), Elizabeth, Emilianus, Euphemia, George (4), Helena, James (3), John (5), Laurence, Lucy, Mark (2), Martin, Marzanus, Michael, including Angelus (4), Nicholas (5), Pancratius, Paul, Peter (6?), Phocas, Potitus, Praexedonia (?), Simon, Stephen, Susanna, Theodore, Three Hebrews (“Trium Puerorum”), Victor, and Vitus (2).
Throughout Italy, hagiotoponyms recall saints of the early church; rarely are places named for Saint Francis or Saint Dominic, even as those personal names grew in popularity.117 Mario Villani asserted that southern Italian place names replicated toponomastic preferences elsewhere in Italy but in a different order of frequency. The ten most common hagiotoponyms in Italy are Peter (643), Martin (160), John (128), Michael (or Angelus, 120), Laurence (79), George (68), Andrew (65), Stephen (61), Nicholas (50), and Vito (49),118 but only Peter, John, Nicholas, George, Michael, James, Mark, Vitus, and Elijah (Elias) are used more than once as place names in the Salento. Nicholas and to a lesser degree Elijah are thus over-represented locally, while Martin is scarcely present as a toponym even though there were many churches dedicated to him.119 This toponymic disparity parallels the one between the local name stock and that in Italy more generally.
Salento hagiotoponyms evidence a special devotion to Saint Peter: San Pietro in Lama and San Pietro Vernotico, both thriving small towns today; San Pietro in Galatina, now simply Galatina; and the extinct casalia of San Pietro de Hispanis,120 San Pietro de lacu Iohannis,121 and probably San Pietro in Bevagna, whose homonymous church still stands. The popularity of Petrine place names is due in part to local legends about the apostle’s sojourn in Apulia en route to Rome,122 even though most of the sites with his name date only to the Middle Ages. In any case, Peter is, after the Virgin, the most widely diffused hagiotoponym throughout Italy,123 so his prominence cannot be attributed merely to local factors.
Most hagiotoponyms commemorate universal saints, but a number of less familiar and even unknown saints’ names are also attested locally. A rare Old Testament hagiotoponym (in addition to Elijah) is Casale Trium Puerorum, now San Crispieri, a reference to the Three Hebrew Children placed into the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel.124 Caesarius probably is not the sixth-century bishop of Arles, but a deacon from Terracina (Sicily) who was sewn into a sack and cast into the sea;125 Danactus (Dana) was a martyr from Illyricum who met the same fate after first being chopped into pieces.126 Emilianus—unknown in modern Italy, but attested near Otranto—could be one of a number of saints with that name; Potitus was an early martyr executed in northwestern Apulia.127 There is no record of a saint named Praexedonia, a hagiotoponym attested near Aurio, although Santa Praxedis exists as a Roman cult, and Rome may also be behind a Santa Co(n)stantina. It is unlikely that these uncommon toponyms represent the collective choice of a community. More likely they reflect individual preferences as the titular saints of privately owned churches around which hamlets or villages later developed.
Popular personal names and hagiotoponyms in the Salento generally coincide, with one interesting exception. Leo, a name used by all three faiths in the medieval Salento and that remained popular throughout the Middle Ages, never appears as a hagiotoponym, possibly because the earliest sainted Leo dates only to the fifth century. The universally renowned John and Nicholas outpace all rivals as both personal names and toponyms. Yet while a male resident of the Salento had a very good chance of being named some variant of Nicholas (Nicola, Niccolò), an inhabitant of Trium Puerorum was highly unlikely to bear the name Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego, just as residents of Naples were never named for their patron saint, Januarius.128 Local cults had little influence on naming patterns except when the local titular saint was also a prominent universal saint.129
To a certain degree, medieval onomastics are indexical of piety. Every place named for a saint
