L'Italo-Americano

T here is a moment, u s u a l l y w h e n o r d e r i n g f o o d , r e a d i n g a m e n u o r e v e n d o i n g your weekly shopping, when Italian place names appear stripped of geography and turned into everyday nouns. You ask for a glass of Barolo without thinking of the vil- lage it comes from, spread Gorgonzola without pictur- ing Lombardy, or pull on a pair of jeans without any awareness that the word itself once pointed to a port city. It is a small linguistic habit, but it says a great deal about how Italian places travelled, some- times farther and more per- manently than the people who named them. This way of naming things after places is not uniquely I t a l i a n , b u t t h e B e l p a e s e offers an unusually rich and coherent set of examples; food, in particular, carried local names into global circu- lation, often preserving them l o n g a f t e r t h e i r o r i g i n a l meanings became blurred. In some cases, the link is precise and protected, in others, it is approximate, mediated by trade, imitation, or foreign interpretation. Taken togeth- er, these words form a kind of parallel map of Italy, one that exists not only on paper, but i n o u r e v e r y d a y s p e a k i n g habits. Consider jeans: how often h a v e y o u t h o u g h t a b o u t w h e r e t h e i r n a m e c o m e s from? Well, history traces it (as many of you likely know, as we wrote about it on these very pages on more than one occasion) back to Genoa, or rather to its French name, Gênes. From at least the six- teenth century, Genoa was associated with a sturdy cot- t o n f a b r i c u s e d f o r w o r k c l o t h e s , p a r t i c u l a r l y f o r sailors. That cloth circulated w i d e l y t h r o u g h Mediterranean trade routes, and its name travelled with it, so, over time, jean or jeanes came to describe the garment rather than the place. Something similar hap- pened with Bologna, though the story is more complicat- ed. In Italy, mortadella di Bologna is a specific prod- uct with a defined origin and identity; abroad, however, particularly in the United States, "bologna" became the name for a generic cooked sausage only loosely inspired by the original. The city name survived, but the product c h a n g e d , i n f l u e n c e d b y industrial production and local taste, in a clear example of how a place name can take on a life of its own, detached f r o m t h e r e a l i t y i t o n c e described. The example of Marsala is perhaps even clearer: the s w e e t , f o r t i f i e d w i n e w e know as a key ingredient in m a n y I t a l i a n d e s s e r t s ( i n c l u d i n g z a b a j o n e a n d plenty of cakes) is named a f t e r t h e S i c i l i a n c i t y where it was developed and exported, particularly in the late eighteenth century; sim- ilarly, Gorgonzola cheese t a k e s i t s n a m e f r o m t h e L o m b a r d t o w n o f Gorgonzola, and today that link is protected and regulat- e d . U n d e r t h e E u r o p e a n DOP (Denominazione di Origine Protetta) system, the name can only be used for cheese produced in spe- cific areas and according to defined methods. I n s o m e c a s e s , p l a c e n a m e s t r a v e l l e d t h r o u g h a n o t h e r l a n g u a g e b e f o r e e n t e r i n g g l o b a l u s e , a s i t happened to "Faience," the general term for tin-glazed pottery, which comes from Faenza, a city known for ceramic production from the R e n a i s s a n c e o n w a r d ; through French trade and terminology, Faenza became faïence, then "faience" in English and, if it is true that the word now describes a category of objects rather than a specific origin, the city itself remains embedded in the term. Prosecco has a slightly d i f f e r e n t s t o r y , o n e t h a t shows how place names can be actively reclaimed: the name comes from a small village near Trieste called, of course, Prosecco, and for centuries it referred to a local wine. As Prosecco became globally popular, Italy took legal steps to reinforce the geographical meaning of the term, ensuring that it referred to a specific area rather than a style that could be replicated anywhere. The same pattern is followed by other famous Italian wines: Barolo, Chianti, Frascati, and countless others, which function internationally as nouns in their own right. Indeed, you do not need to explain what a Barolo is in most parts of the world, as the name has become short- hand for a set of expectations a b o u t t a s t e , q u a l i t y , a n d prestige. Yet Barolo is also a village, a landscape, and a specific set of vineyards. Many Italian cheeses fol- l o w a s i m i l a r p a t h , f r o m A s i a g o , w h i c h t a k e s i t s name from the homonymous plateau, to Taleggio, which is linked to Val Taleggio, all the way to Castelmagno, the name of which refers to a small municipality in the province of Cuneo, where the cheese has been produced since Medieval times. What is really interesting h e r e , h o w e v e r , i s n ' t h o w many of these connections exist, but the fact that they are still with us at all, outliv- ing changes in taste, shifts in production, and even the disappearance of the condi- tions that first created them. Some have been simplified along the way, others care- fully fenced in and protected, others stretched so far that t h e o r i g i n a l r e f e r e n c e i s barely visible. Still, every one o f t h e m b e g a n a s a p l a c e name deeply connected with a s p e c i f i c t r a d i t i o n a n d m o m e n t i n c u l i n a r y a n d wine history. There is a slight imbal- ance, as it often happens, in the way these names travel, b e c a u s e o n c e t h e y m o v e abroad, they become familiar but may lose in precision: that is to say that you can know what bologna is with- o u t e v e r t h i n k i n g a b o u t B o l o g n a o r u s e t h e w o r d Parmesan without picturing Parma at all. Basically, the name becomes part of a lan- guage while the place itself slips out of view. And yet that distance is not always a loss, sometimes it does the opposite, because the word lingers just enough to raise curiosity, to make s o m e o n e w o n d e r w h y i t sounds the way it does, or w h a t i t m i g h t o n c e h a v e referred to. In this sense, these names carry fragments of Italian geography and her- i t a g e i n t o o r d i n a r y l i f e , inserting cities, towns, and r e g i o n s i n t o h a b i t s t h a t repeat themselves every day. And how fitting it is! Italy's influence, when you think of it, rarely travelled through declarations or explanations; m o r e o f t e n , i t m o v e d through routine. Looked at this way, pouring a glass of Barolo or cutting into a piece of Gorgonzola is a small act o f t r a n s l a t i o n , b e c a u s e a place name crosses a border, adjusts to a new context, and s e t t l e s i n t o a n o t h e r l a n - guage. The map it traces may be incomplete and a little uneven, but it lasts, and it is meaningful. FRANCESCA BEZZONE How Italian cities ended up on our plates – and in our closets! THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 16 L'Italo-Americano The Stagnone Lagoon, near Marsala (Photo: Emicristea/Dreamstime). The town has been linked historically to the production and export of its famous fortified wine (Photo: Barmalini/Dreamstime) LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE

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