This
page was written and is maintained by Coblaith
Muimnech , who holds its copyright. It is made available under
a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share
Alike 3.0 United States License.The Bavarian State Library owns a multi-volume armorial made somewhere in what is now Italy in the middle of the 16th century. It's shelfmarked as Codices inconographici 266 through 280, and the library has very generously scanned the pages and uploaded the images to its website.
The armorial is divided into sections headed with the names of 25 cities. The section on Rome contains several coats of arms labelled as belonging to one "DOMVS" or another, and the sections on Milan and Florence several surnames beginning with the word "CASA". There are also a couple of one-word surnames in the section on Pisa consisting of "CASA-" prepended to a surname that appears independently elsewhere in the armorial.
Joseph G. Fucilla, in his 1949 book Our Italian Surnames (pp. 16-17), explains:
Casa is a synonym for family (cf. casato, family-surname).. . .The use of the word casa in this sense still survives in Lombardy where one frequently hears the noble families referred to as Casa Busca, Casa Taverna, etc., or hears the familiar greeting: Oh, Casa Pennuti, vome valla? how is the Pennuti family.
It's difficult to say where the "DOMVS" names fit into this pattern. They are
Google Translate gives "of the house of" as the translation for the Latin "domus", and " 's house" for the Latin "casa". "Home" is presented as the primary translation for the Italian "casa", but "house" and "household" are both among the other definitions listed. So while "Casa Pennuti" may figuratively mean "the Pennuti family", it literally means something more like, "the house of Pennuti" or "Pennuti's household".
"DOMVS", "CASA", and "CASA-" names are indexed in this article. The surnames are also listed in my index to surnames from the armorial.
Sometimes, especially if you're not an expert in a relevant field, a secondary source is more helpful in research than a primary source. This is not one of those times. This index contains little in the way of additional facts and its source material is readily accessible. I strongly recommend that you consult the original material before drawing any conclusions, and that if you choose to use one of the names in a submission to the S.C.A. College of Arms you use the manuscript scans, not this index, as your supporting documentation. After all, I might have gotten something wrong.
Names from the sections on Rome and Milan are in Latin. Those from the sections on Florence and Pisa are Italian.
Every surname in the section on Milan begins with "DE". That degree of uniformity in the use of prepositions is not found in other 16th-century sources. It seems likeliest that the prepositions aren't properly part of the names at all, but signify "of" as in, "These are the arms of. . .." It is therefore impossible to draw from this data any firm conclusions about which prepositions (if any) were incorporated into these names when they were spoken.
Initially, "V" and "U" were variant forms of the same letter. By the 16th century, some writers had begun to use the "V" form only where a consonant was wanted and the "U" form only where it a vowel was, but that pattern is not evident in this armorial. The "V" form is always used.
| inscription | section header (modern English equivalent) | primary source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| DOMVS COLVMNÆ | ROMA (Rome) | BSB Cod.icon 268, folio 24r |
| DOMVS COMITVM | ROMA (Rome) | BSB Cod.icon 268, folio 25r |
| DOMVS CÆSARINÆ | ROMA (Rome) | BSB Cod.icon 268, folio 26r |
| DOMVS GÆTANÆ | ROMA (Rome) | BSB Cod.icon 268, folio 27r |
| DOMVS SAVELLÆ | ROMA (Rome) | BSB Cod.icon 268, folio 29r |
| DOMVS VERNESII | ROMA (Rome) | BSB Cod.icon 268, folio 31r |
| DOMVS VRSINÆ | ROMA (Rome) | BSB Cod.icon 268, folio 28r |
| inscription | section header (modern English equivalent) | primary source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| DE CASA BAXERIGIS | MEDIOLANVM (Milan) | BSB Cod.icon. 270, folio 111r |
| DE CASA MVSTIS | MEDIOLANVM (Milan) | BSB Cod.icon. 270, folio 111r |
| DE CASA PESTIS | MEDIOLANVM (Milan) | BSB Cod.icon. 270, folio 111r |
| DE CASA ROSEGIS | MEDIOLANVM (Milan) | BSB Cod.icon. 270, folio 111r |
| DA CASA VECCHIA | FLORENTIA (Florence) | BSB Cod.icon. 277, folio 49r |
| inscription | section header (modern English equivalent) | primary source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| CASAPERINI | PISA (Pisa) | BSB Cod.icon. 278, folio 77r |
| CASAPIERI | PISA (Pisa) | BSB Cod.icon. 278, folio 76r |
This
page was written and is maintained by Coblaith
Muimnech , who holds its copyright. It is made available under
a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share
Alike 3.0 United States License.
Click to visit Coblaith's homepage or the index to her names articles.