What’s in a Name?

Lately, it seems to have become very en-vogue to name your child after a city or a country. Just as the Beckhams have named their son Brooklyn and the Hiltons their daughter Paris, many parents are warming to names such as India, London or Phoenix. But this practice should surely come with a warning. Like a tattoo of a Chinese character, not only is it pretty much there for life, but also if it’s not in your native language, you could find it doesn’t mean exactly what you think it might.

Take Milan as a name, for example. While this name has been around for quite sometime, it seems to be sneaking its way back into the list of popular baby names. Its meaning seems to vary greatly depending on which internet site you visit, for example, in Latin it is said to mean “eager, laborious or rival or a coming together", while its Slavic version means "gracious". Another source suggests it is Italian for “Northerner” (which Italian language that would be, I am not sure), while another particularly creative source claims it means “gracious, northerner, from the city of Milan, Italy.”

Perhaps to understand what Milan really means, it is important to go back to its beginnings, when a group of Celtic Gauls first decided to found a city on this fertile plain. Rather than recording history in written from, these Celts had a strong spoken tradition where people called Bards, or poets would pass on information by way of poetic meter or rhyme. Hence without any written records, we can never be bet-your-life-on-it sure of the origins of the name Milan, but there are certainly some interesting versions of the story.

It possibly means Meilhan or “sacred place”. The Celts built their towns and cities gathering around a central point called a Meilhan, which was considered to be sacred and from this point, their cities would then grow emanating outwards. It has been suggested that the word Milan was later derived from this, then becoming Milano to glide more easily off the Italian tongue. The Celtic way of developing cities also explains Milan’s concentric-circle or ring road map, diverse from that of Roman cities which have a more simplified grid pattern.

On the other hand, the city’s Roman name was Mediolanum, which possibly meant "in the middle of the plain", -lanum being the Celtic equivalent of “plain” and of course, medio, latin for “middle”. Makes perfect sense; Milan is indeed located in the middle of a plain. Interestingly, the German word for Milan is Mailand, likely derived from the Celt word Mittland which means “central land” referring to Milan’s strategic position in the middle of the fertile Padana Plain.

However, the most widely accepted theory or tale, as the case may be, involves a legendary half-furred boar whose image has been etched into Milan’s history… and on various buildings around the city. The legend begins way back in about 390 B.C., when the Celts invaded northern Italy, led by a certain Belloveso. Belloveso, wishing to found a city, called upon the help of seven elders. These wise elders released a white wild boar that wore a coat of half-wool like that of a sheep, and they predicted that the place where this animal would be found would mark their sacred altar. Belloveso sent his men in search of this particular boar, and after some time found it in a clearing in the forest. Belloveso declared this to be their sacred site and founded, what would eventually become, the city of Milan here. In 222 AD Milan came under Roman rule, conferring on Milan the name Mediolanum or “half-furred” in reference to the Celts boar. At some stage, the name fully evolved into present day Milano.

A fanciful tale? The half-furred boar has become one of the symbols of Milan and four of its images can be found throughout the city: a bas-relief coat of arms positioned between the Piazza della Scala and the Piazza Mercanti, inside Palazzo Marino (Town Hall), the Duomo’s façade and finally in Piazza Mercanti where there is a bas-relief of the boar, said to have been found during excavations for the building of Palazzo della Ragione and walled into one of its pilasters in 1228. The piazza was once a jostling market place (Mercanti means merchants) and the city’s commercial centre and the palazzo was not only the law courts, but also the place where justice was often carried out. In fact, the centre of the square was once occupied by "the bankrupt's stone", where fraudulent bankrupts were tied up and exposed to the mirth of the population. Many quick-time merchants and unscrupulous dealers also conducted business here, as well as those priests with no parish who eked out a living by selling masses and funerals. You’ll find the bas-relief boar on the second pilaster of Palazzo della Ragione on the corner nearest Piazza Duomo (in Via Mercanti) and if you look carefully, you can almost imagine that little half-furred boar saying, “So, what’s in a name? Perhaps a lot more than you think!”

Ashleigh Burns