The subjects’ names. A comparison between town and mountains in late medieval Piedmont

Abstract

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the dominions of the House of Savoy extended to a large part of Piedmont, increasingly encompassing and overlapping pre-existing local lordly dominations. The paper investigates the influence of these different relations of political allegiance between lords and subjects on the onomastic choices of individuals, comparing two territories in a diachronic perspective. On the one hand, the city of Turin, at the centre of the Savoy dominions from the end of the thirteenth century, whose sources allow an in-depth analysis of the names prevalent among inhabitants of various economic levels, social classes and origins; on the other, Valchiusella, a valley in the Graian Alps firmly controlled by the counts of Castellamonte and counts of San Martino at least since the twelfth century. The aim of the research is not only to assess the incidence of loyalty relationships in the local onomastic stock, but also the emergence of other influences (religious, cultural, community) in the choice of personal names.