When Paul Kengor recently published his wonderful American Spectator reflection for Italian American Heritage Month, “Italian Without the Name,” he struck a nerve across the Italian American diaspora and with me specifically. Even a cursory perusal of the reader comments reveals a shared indignation at the historical erasure of our ancestral identity.
All of this raises an obvious question regarding the systematic mangling of magnificent Italian names: che cavolo?! (what the heck?!) Or, said differently, how did a heritage defined by lyrical cadences allow its names to be flattened into Anglo-Saxon blandness or twisted into literally translated absurdity?
