Doge

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For other uses, see Doge (disambiguation).

Doge (plural dogi or doges) is a dialectal Italian word that descends from the Latin dux (as does the English duke and the standard Italian duce), meaning "leader", especially in a military context.

The title of Doge was used for the elected chief of state in a number of Italian "crowned republics". The two best known such republics were Venice and Genoa, which rivaled each other, and the other regional great powers, by building their historical city-states into maritime, commercial, and territorial mini-empires.

Another Italian republic styled most serene republic, was minute and virtually insignificant. It was named after its capital city Senarica, west of Teramo (in Abruzzo) on Central Italy's Adriatic coast. Senarica also elected dogi, possibly annually, from 1343 until its annexation to the Neapolitan kingdom of Sicily in 1797.

In some of his writings, Herzl proposed the title of "Doge" for the Head of the Jewish State he envisioned; however, the actual State of Israel did not follow this idea by the founder of Zionism.