Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.32728/h2017.05
Prefectorial decrees published by the Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia and the compulsory italianization of the surnames present in the Nuove Province with a focus on the Istrian province
Antonietta Cereghetti Passini
; Mendrisio
Abstract
The denationalization plan of the minorities living in the Nuove Province (Trento, Bolzano, Trieste/Trst, Istria/Istra, Gorizia/Gorica, Fiume/Rijeka, Zara/Zadar) was started by the Italian State in the aftermath of World War I and comprised the compulsory Italianization of surnames. The latter process was legalized by means of laws and decrees passed by the new fascist government. In each provincial prefecture, committees were established to put together a register recording all surnames considered non-Italian along with their respective substitutive forms. The formal procedure, with which it was not always complied, required that a request for surname change either came from the head of the household (by posting it on the City Hall bulletin board) or from the prefecture by imposition. Afterwards, the change was declared valid with a decree signed by the Province Prefect, notified to the individual involved, published on the Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia, and recorded in the civil registry.
In the present work, we considered and numerically analyzed all decrees concerning a surname change and published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale. Since the Italian State not always complied with the obligation to publish all decrees, our results cannot be complete. Nonetheless, they attest to the sheer onomastic obsession that affected hundreds of thousands of individuals.
Lastly, a more detailed analysis of the decrees issued by the Pola/Pula Prefecture shows to what extent the dominant power was engaged in this process. Behind the stated desire to recover the original Italian and Latin surnames, the fascist regime was in fact perpetrating what historiography later called “cultural genocide” and “State onomasticide”.
Keywords
denationalization; Nuove Province; Istria Province; Pula; surnames; fascism
Hrčak ID:
202092
URI
Publication date:
29.12.2017.
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