If, as has been argued, the intellectual milieu—represented by commissioners and signers of books, acts, and charters—is not inclined toward innovation in the domain of names,94 the same seems true for nonelites: with few opportunities to “make a name” for themselves and their relatives, they preferred to maintain tradition, perpetuating family identification by repeating names from previous generations. In his work on late thirteenth- to mid-fourteenth-century surnames in Bari, Martin identified laymen as most likely to adopt a surname, followed by clergy and then women95 (female surnames are nonexistent in the Salento). I discuss in other chapters the ways in which women were present in the visual culture of the Salento, but names were not the primary vehicle.
Kinship
Kinship information is preserved in about half of the early visual sources (ninth to eleventh century) that contain fully or partly preserved names of Christians. Most common are references to a named man’s wife and child(ren), but in only three of those cases is the wife’s name given [32.A, 32.H, 146.A]. In an inscription from Brindisi, John and Thecla share equal billing as parents of their children [25]. In addition to children mentioned in connection with a wife, there are two references to children alone [32.I, 33.A], one “very dear child” [32.J], and a single child [159]; unlike contemporary Jewish epitaphs, no early medieval Christian text singles out a daughter. In one exceptional case, a named mother is associated with her unnamed child without any reference to a husband or father [32.B]. In this small sampling of ninth- to eleventh-century sources, which come from only a handful of sites, wives are recalled less often than children; twice as many wives as children are noted in the twelfth- to fourteenth-century texts. These numbers are probably too small to extrapolate larger social patterns.
In a long eleventh-century epitaph at Carpignano, the father of the deceased gives the name of his “very dear” child, Stratigoules (a diminutive of profession), but omits the name of his wife while drawing attention to his own now-illegible name [32.J]. This is the only case in the Christian Salento in which an emotional relationship is made explicit: repeated expressions of love and grief supplement a list of all the relatives, friends, and slaves who will miss the dead boy. In other texts, relatively unemotional exhortations to God or the Virgin or a saint to remember the speaker or his or her loved one are supplemented by pleas to passersby to pray for the “speaker” or for the commemorated deceased [156.A].96 All the attempts to solicit participation in the named individuals’ salvation come from the twelfth- to fourteenth-century visual evidence.
A greater range of family relationships is documented in the later visual material. There are references to parents [1.A, 35], a father and mother [153.A], and a brother [94.A]. Men are often identified as the son of a named father, and one identifies himself in relation to his grandfather [94.K]. The male line is by far the best-documented kinship category. One named man shares a tomb with a widow, but their relationship to each other and to the author of the inscription is not specified [107]. A wife is often cited but not usually named (in [1.A], her name is now lost). In connection with a husband/father, one unnamed wife and son merit collective mention [24.B], a wife and unspecified child(ren) three [43.A, 44, 143.B], and motherless children once [33.A]. The only time a wife and children are fully identified by relationship and name is in the 1379/80 apse at Vaste, where the figures’ proportions also reinforce the family relationships [157.A].97 The depiction of family groups is very rare, but the Greek-language patrons or the artist at Vaste may have been inspired to depict the whole family based on precedents in large Roman-rite churches, such as Santa Maria del Casale outside Brindisi, where numerous couples and family groups are shown adoring the Virgin and Child [28.D, G, I, Q, R, U; Plates 4, 5]. Another man and woman, presumably a married couple, kneel and stand to the left of an unusual scene, in Massafra, of Christ being led to school by his mother98 [63.A; Plate 12]. At the crypt church of the archangel Michael at Li Monaci, an embracing couple depicted on the ceiling [43.C; Plate 9] has been identified as the “soldier Souré and his wife” named in the apse dedicatory inscription [43.A], but this is very unlikely: the couple is far from the dedicatory text and cannot be seen by someone reading it; there are no precedents for depicting patrons in anything but a devotional or supplicating posture; and patronal images are seldom found on church ceilings.99 The paucity of visual examples underscores that it was mainly through words, not images, that familial and emotional relationships could best be expressed.
Visualizing Names
Names often have a visual aspect that draws the reader’s attention. Names in all kinds of texts are often divided so that they occupy more visual space, usually two lines; examples include Leon/tos (Leo) and his wife Chryso/lea in the 959 inscription at Carpignano [32.A], Domin/icus de Juliano at Ceglie [39], and Ni/cholas son of Vitalius Fe/rriaci at Vaste [156]. In Hebrew texts, the “son of” or “daughter of” that is almost always part of the name marks the line division. In all three local languages, a name may also be emphasized by its placement at the beginning or end of a line of text (Souré [43.A], Nicholas de Marra [28.W]). In Leah’s epitaph, her father’s name is emphasized this way while hers is centered, a visually less prominent position [16.A]. Nicholas of Sternatia’s name occupies both the end and the beginning of lines in his dedicatory inscription [108.A]. Multiple ligatures also draw the eye to those words in a block of text: in the dedicatory inscription at San Vito dei Normanni, the principal patron’s and painters’ names are condensed with triple ligatures—double ligatures are far more common—and thus seem darker and more prominent against the white background than do the other names [109.A]. John of Ugento, who built a church at Acquarica del Capo, has his name perfectly centered, both vertically and horizontally, in the dedicatory inscription at the center of the west wall [1]; Antony in the Vaste apse is centered horizontally [157.A], and the surname Moraville appears on Roger’s column in the exact center, the fourth line of a seven-line text [82]. Anna is centralized in the Latin epitaph at Oria but Hannah is not in the Hebrew one [81].
Finally, it is very common to inscribe a name so that it abuts a sacred figure. This is the case for both Leon/tos and Chryso/lea at Carpignano, where half of each name nearly touches the throne of Christ [32.A]. At the other end of the same crypt, the dead Stratigoules’s name comes close to the right arm of Saint Christine, a proximity not vouchsafed his father’s name in a different quadrant of the inscription [32.J]; perhaps the proximity of names and saints was understood to benefit of the deceased. This text also emphasizes certain lines by means of a change in color of both background and script. Spotlighted in white letters are “with Nicholas the wise,” plus six more lines on the viewer’s left; to the right of the standing Saint Christine is “saints seen here, the all-” (“-immaculate Lady Theotokos and Nicholas of Myra” are on the next line). The striking color change draws the viewer’s attention to Nicholas and the Virgin, who are also painted in the soffit of the arcosolium and therefore present both visually and verbally at the tomb of Stratigoules. While such coloristic emphasis is atypical, it is clear that naming was not exclusively a verbal phenomenon; identities also could be announced and reinforced by visual means.100
Place Names
Jewish names have left no traces in local toponymics apart from references to streets or neighborhoods in which Jews formerly lived.101 These often date to the fifteenth century or later, when Jews were required to live in special enclaves at the edges of towns rather than throughout the habitat, as was generally the case in the Middle Ages.102 Therefore, the vast majority of information about medieval Jewish onomastics concerns personal names. For Christians, however, personal names and place names overlapped because both toponyms and given names were often the names of saints. Given the importance
