L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2014 L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2014 www.italoamericano.com 8 Dear Readers, Rosaria Restaurant, in Saugus, Massachusetts, named after owner Joe Pace's mother, Rosaria, who hailed from Abruzzo, the region known for its "forte ma gentile popolo" was the site of a "Ciao Italia Mary Ann Esposito Foundation Benefit Dinner" recently. The dinner event, generously co-hosted by Mr. Joe Pace and beloved television chef, Mary Ann Esposito, showcased some of Mary Ann Esposito's renown Italian culinary creations and were enjoyed by all, thereby delighting the palates of some ninety "Ciao Italia Mary Ann Esposito Foundation Benefit" attendees. Mary Ann Esposito also made a presentation about her "Ciao Italia Foundation" which will enthusiastically be promot- ing Italian Culture through food and tradition. Mary Ann Esposito, author, chef and the television host of Ciao Italia with Mary Ann Esposito, which started in 1989, is the longest running televi- sion cooking program in America. Food and culture are central to the Italian American experi- ence. For generations, Italian- American families have come together around the dinner table where parents and grandparents have passed on their traditions and values. Gaps between gener- ations have been bridged by home-cooked meals, but times have changed. The mission of the Mary Ann Esposito Foundation is to pre- serve authentic Italian and Italian-American experience by providing educational informa- tion and digital demonstrations for students who want to become thenext generation of great Italian chefs. The Esposito family is con- tributing significant resources to this project's success, but is also actively seeking contributions to create the necessary resources that will build and maintain a Ciao Italia Italian Heritage and Education Resource Center. The Center will be maintained by a major American university and will be open to any student wishing to research Italian gas- tronomy. The Center will house the entire catalogue of Ciao Italia resources in formats that are accessible for generations of students to come. To keep the administrative costs at a minimum, the Mary Ann Esposito Foundation will operate as a donor advised fund at Greater Horizons, a national 501-(c)(3) organization with more than $1 billion in assets. Greater Horizons ensures fidu- ciary excellence and legal com- pliance. Greater Horizons also provides donors with the maxi- mum tax deduction allowable by law. Gifts of cash, stock, real estate and hard-to-value assets are handled by Greater Horizon's expert staff. The donor advised fund will be directly advised and overseen by Mary Ann and Guy Esposito. Checks for the Foundation should be addressed to: "Ciao Italia" Mary Ann Esposito Foundation C/o Greater Horizons 1055 Broadway, Suite 130 Kansas City, MO 64105 *** Mary Ann Esposito was raised in Buffalo, New York. Her mother was a dietician. Her grandmothers, both professional chefs, moved to the United States from Italy in the 1890s. Her paternal grandmother, from Sicily, owned a butcher shop in Fairport, New York, and her maternal grandmother lived in Buffalo, where she owned a boarding house. The latter grandmother was from Naples, and continued the traditions of her Italian household within the boarding house. The boarding house was the only house in the neighborhood that had a bathtub, and on Friday nights she would offer neighbors a bath and din- ner for a quarter. While her grandmothers provided Italian food, Esposito desired to eat standard foods like other chil- dren: Wonder Bread and ice- berg lettuce. Esposito, who never intended to pursue a career in cooking, learned to cook from her family. Her grandmothers made bread every day, with Esposito helping to make upwards of 20 loaves of bread a day, canning vegetables and fruits, and helping to pre- pare ingredients for meals. Eventually, Esposito attended college, where she would gradu- ate with a teaching degree and become an elementary school teacher. In 1979, her mother sent her a pasta maker, and despite a lack of interest in cooking as an adult, Esposito taught herself how to make pasta dough. The following year, she and her husband Guy (Gaetano) visited Italy for the first time, visiting his cousins. While in Italy, Esposito started attending a cooking class. She began learning the history of Italian cooking, region by region, and traveling to the country twice a year for cooking lessons. At the University of New Hampshire she took classes to learn how to speak Italian. By 1985 she joined the History Master's pro- gram at the university, writing her thesis about Italian Renaissance cooking. Esposito started teaching cooking through the University of New Hampshire's Division of Continuing Education. In the mid-1980s she submitted a pro- posal for a cooking show to New Hampshire Public Television. The show was delayed production because of the small size of the television station, however, upon moving to a larger station, a pilot was taped. The pilot was a test to not only gauge viewer reception, but also to see how Esposito would be on camera. On the hottest day of the year in the region, the television crew came to Esposito's home in Durham, New Hampshire and the pilot was taped. Upon airing, the pilot received great reception and the longest running television cook- ing show was born... Today, most Western names consist of one or more given names combined with a family name, or surname. Surnames are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Nobility and landowners may have had identi- fying names besides their given names, but ordinary residents of most countries didn't use sur- names until they were required by law, some not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Combining the 'given' name with a surname identified an individual within a family, and resulted in the 'John Smith' type of name we're now familiar with. Many surnames were used by our ancestors so long ago that after generations of being passed on in the family, no one can remember why the surnames were originally applied, or what they meant. Many areas, includ- ing Scandinavia, Spain and Ireland had naming conventions for surnames; traditions similar to but often more complex than the customs for choosing given names. These conventions could differ widely between countries. Early surnames, in any locali- ty, identified a person by some physical attribute, such as Long, Short or White; or an occupation like Butcher, Baker or Cooper; or a place of origin – Calabrese, Palermo or Licata. Some were based on parentage or ancestry – Johnson, Svenssen, Di Carlo, Di Francesco, etc. Knowing the meanings of surnames can even help to identi- fy ancestors who came to America after a couple of genera- tions in another country, where they may have changed their sur- name to the local language, to 'fit in'. Surnames derived from a person's occupation, in Italian, English, French and German, include: Molinaro: (Miller, Meunier, and Müller) Macellaro: (Butcher, Boucher, and Fleischman) Ferraro: (Smith (from 'black- smith'), Forgeron, and Schmied or Schmidt) Furnaro: (Baker, Boulanger, and Bäcker) Surnames derived from a person's appearance, in Italian, English, French and German, include: Russo: (Redd, Laroux, and Rotkopf) Bellanca: (White, Leblanc, and Weiss) Bruno: (Brown, Lebrun, Braun) Nero: (Black, Le Noir, Schwarz) Luongo: (Long, Long, Lang) Piccolo: (Little, Petit, Klein) If you're searching for an ancestor from Italy, remember that not just the given name, but the surname as well, may have been anglicized. For example, if your Italian grandfather went by the name Anthony Smith, you may have to search passenger manifests and Italian birth records for Antonio Ferraro, and so on. The naming conventions in Italy and especially in the Mezzogiorno often resulted in numerous people in a town or community with exactly the same name, both given name and sur- name. Methods were adopted to differentiate between such indi- viduals. For example, there might be three boys in the same town, all named Pietro Coniglio; one short, one fat, and one red- haired. They might be nick- named lo Curto, lo Grosso and lo Russo; or Shorty, Fatty, and Red. These nicknames would then result in their names being given as Pietro Coniglio lo Curto, Pietro Coniglio lo Grosso, and Pietro Coniglio lo Russo. Often, to identify the offspring and descendants of these individuals, the nickname was applied to them as well. In some cases, the original surname might be dropped, so that the nickname actually became the surname. So the grandson of Pietro Coniglio lo Grosso might be known, com- monly and officially, as Pietro Grosso. These descriptive names are called soprannomi ('nick- names') or 'nciurie ('insults'), because they were often deroga- tory. In many towns, a man's associates might not even know his actual surname. Unfortunately, the evolution of nicknames into accepted sur- names is not well documented. But knowing a per- son's nickname can be very help- ful if you visit his birthplace, where living descendants or neighbors might recall the con- nection. Even if the nicknames were not officially adopted, sev- eral subsequent generations of a family may have used it. As an aside, many American descendants of Italian and Sicilian ancestors have (probably unwittingly) continued this charming custom. I'd venture that many of us know people referred to by names like 'Charlie the Hat', 'Joe Nerves', 'Sammy Sideways', and so on. Visit Angelo's website, www.bit.ly/AFCGen, and write to him at genealogytips@ aol.com. He is the author of the book The Lady of the Wheel (La Ruotaia), based on his genealogi- cal research of Sicilian foundlings. See www.bit.ly/ruota- ia for more information, or order the book at www.bit.ly/racalmuto. Mary Ann Esposito Finding Our Immigrant Ancestry: Butcher, Baker, Basket Maker ANGELO CONIGLIO

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