Prontuario dei nomi locali dell'Alto Adige

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The Prontuario dei nomi locali dell'Alto Adige, in English Reference Work of Place Names in Alto Adige, is a list of Italianized place names in Alto Adige which was published in 1916 by the Reale Società Geografica Italiana (Royal Italian Geographic Society). The list was called the Prontuario in short and it formed an important part of the Italianization process initiated by the fascists, as it was the basis for the official place and district names in the province of Bolzano.[dubious – discuss]

It has often been criticised by the German speaking population of the province on the grounds that the new names have little historical relevance and many entirely new names were introduced.

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[edit] Development

In the 1890s Ettore Tolomei founded a nationalist magazine "The Italian Nation", and in 1906 the "Archivio per l'Alto Adige". He hoped to create the impression that South Tyrol had originally been an Italian territory and that the German history of South Tyrol was merely a short interruption and that the land did indeed belong to Italy.[citation needed]

In 1916, a year after Italy's entrance in the First World War which was instigated by Allied promises, a commission was set up to find Italian names for places in the "soon to be conquered territory". The commission (comprised of Tolomei himself, Professor of Botany and Chemistry Ettore De Togni as well as the librarian Vittorio Baroncelli) reported almost 12,000 Italian place and district names on the basis of Tolomei's study, which he had begun in 1906. In June 1916, this list was published as Volume XV, Part II of Memorie of the Reale Società Geografica Italiana as well as in Archivio per l'Alto Adige, con Ampezzo e Livinallongo, a trimestral publication established by Tolomei himself.[citation needed]

[edit] Impact

In 1923, three years after South Tyrol had been formally annexed, Italian place names, almost entirely based on the Prontuario, were made official by means of a royal decree. German and Ladin[dubious – discuss] names were banned. In 1940, the fascist government legalized the new names.[citation needed]

After the end of the Second World War, reform processes tolerated the dual use of names on street signs, while the Italian names remain as the official ones, based on the 1940 law.

In the 1990s, a commission consisting of the Professors Josef Breu (Vienna, representing Austria in the Toponymy commission of the UN), Peter Glatthard (Berne) and Carlo Alberto Mastrelli (Florence, current "Archivio per l'Alto Adige") failed as Mastrelli insisted on the fascist decrees, while Breu and Glatthard promoted the UN-Guidelines.reprint of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 28 September 2000

[edit] Methodology

Tolomei explained the methodology for finding Italian names in his introduction to the Prontuario. The main principles are:

  1. Pre-existing Italian names: e.g. (Bozen-Bolzano, Meran-Merano), ;
  2. Names of nearby ancient Roman settlements: e.g. Sterzing-Vipiteno, from the Roman settlement called Vipitenum;
  3. Phonetic Reduction: The name was simply italianized (normally by adding a vowel to the end of the name), e.g. Brenner-Brennero or for Moos-Moso.
  4. Direct Translation: e.g Lago Verde for Grünsee; this was frequent source of mistakes, as Linsberg was translated with Monte Luigi, which was also used as the translation of Luisberg; Blumau was wrongly interpreted as flower valley, and translated to meadow Prato all'Isarco.
  5. The name of the patron saint of the town: e.g.: Innichen-San Candido;
  6. Geographical derivations: e.g. Colle Isarco (Hill-upon-Isarco) for Gossensaß.

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[edit] See also

[edit] Notes and references

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