Italian culture

Since as far back as I can remember I’ve always had an affinity with Italy. I like its culture, its language (even if I can’t speak it) and most definitely its automobiles.
Most of all I admire its names. There is nothing as romantic as an Italian name. Now I’m all for promoting Irish culture, but most of our anglicised names, when translated back into Irish, sound like you have a frog in your throat.
Take my name for example. In English it’s Robert Cullen. As Gaeilge it’s Roibeard Ó Chuilleain. In Italian It would probably be Roberto Culliano. Which sounds better? No contest is there.
It’s the same for Italian place names. An Italian named Romano Artioli relaunched French car maker Bugatti in Italy in the early 90s and brought it to a place in the North of the country called Campogalliano. That sounds like a place where fast cars should be made.
Although the project was short-lived, the Bugatti factory was just a few miles down the road from a much more established name – Ferrari. The Prancing Horse, as the firm is known, is located in a place called Maranello, surrounded by twisting mountain roads and constantly echoing to the sound of the best engines in the world.
The chairman of Ferrari is a man called Luca di Montezemolo (pronounced Monty-zem-oh-low). How cool is that name.
Best of all, chances are in Italy you will not be surrounded by friends with the same surname, because Italy has the biggest collection of native surnames in the world, with over 350,000 Italian surnames recorded.
In fact the ten most common surnames only cover one percent of the population. Put that in your pipe Messrs Murphy, Kelly, Walsh, O’Sullivan and Ryan.
Frankly, I’d rather be in the top ten of Italian surnames anyway. They include Rossi, Ferrari, Romano, Bianchi, Marino and Greco.
This whole love affair with Italy has been ignited recently by the excellent BBC programme “Francesco’s Mediterranean Voyage” in which Italian architect and historian Francesco Da Mosto boards a Venetian ship called the Black Swan for a journey from Italy to Turkey, via countries Crete, Montenegro, Bosnia and Greece.
This programme followed on from “Francesco’s Italy” in which the same presenter gave an amazing insight into areas of Italy which are very familiar and many which I’ve never heard of before.
Ah, the romance, the history, the sunshine. No doubt I’ll end up in Italy some time and I’ll revel in the accents and the culture. Until then, just call me Roberto.