Recently my Mother received a fancy post card ad from LakeCountyWineries.com. It was in regard to their first big event of the year, the Lake County Wine Adventure 2015. It runs for three days (Fri-Sun) from May 15 to 17. The information is on the website. When we think of northern California wine, especially in regards to the history of the Cisalpine people, we think of Napa or Sonoma counties. However, Lake County is part of that history, and is emerging as an important center for the multi-billion dollar California wine industry.
Much of northern California looks so much like the "northern nations." Napa can look like Tuscany, Santa Cruz like the Apennine Mountains, Sonoma like Piemonte, and Lake County like the "Lakes region" of Lombardy. The self-determinist Cisalpine people and early northern California was a perfect match. Whenever I drive down 101 in Sonoma County at night, and I see the old farm properties with perhaps just a few lights on... as if a scene from a century ago with a few oil lamps on against a black surrounding landscape.
An ancient name
I recall, when I read the book 'History of the Lombards', the old Langobard names. Most often they were typical ancient Germanic names. However, one seems to be more rooted in the Cisalpine culture. According the the website BehindTheName.com, the name "Romilda" is "Italian" and "ancient Germanic." It means "famous battle" from the Germanic elements hrom ("fame") and hild ("battle"). Although once used as both feminine and masculine, naturally it would be feminine today unless altered with an "o" at the end. It's a name which became more well-known due to the Harry Potter character Romilda. The noteworthy nineteenth century opera singer Romilda Pantaleoni was from Udine.
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2 comments:
Indeed, not just Cisalpines took to Germanic names. Other Gallo-Roman regions like Occitania, Langue d'Oil region and Catalonia have plenty of Germanic names in their cultures too. Enric, Guilhem, Ermessenda, Ermengarda, Galdric, Jacques, Gerard, Roderic, Aymeric, etc.
The descendants of Illyrians adopted Slavic names like Tomislav, Miodrag, Nemanja, etc.
Actually, Slavic names like Igor and Wladimiro are common in Italy these days, too, but I don't know if that's more of a relatively recent historic development.
The question is why did the names of these northerners have such an intense and widespread appeal?
Apparently in some parts of Spain, Visigothic heritage has more admired than perhaps other places with similar influences. I like some of the Friulian words.. Italianized from Slavic or German words. Maybe it's the interesting spellings.
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