Naming patterns
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G4PM-ZMR
What do the many names of Francesco Paolo Giovanni Maria Fortunato Roman mean? The Maria Fortunato Roman names seem to repeat within the extended family.
Answers
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In the patrician families, (especially the Roman ones, but this applies to all of Italy [perhaps also in the rest of Europe]). Traces of the patronymic system remained. It is still used in many Muslim states, i.e. the newborn takes the name of his ancestors, usually precisely, those in the paternal line.
In reality, the newborn is also invested with the names of the maternal line, when they are of important characters.
This is why many characters of noble lineage have, besides their own, a string of names
Then the custom also moved into the bourgeoisie and the common people.
To give an example, my name is Giovanni, but at the Livorno registry office I am registered as Giovanni Ugo (my mother's brother) Romano (this was the name of a Mussolini's son and it was 1939)
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Romano is the surname btw so no surprise to see that repeated. Here's the birth record in question. The parents have some status as they are referred to with the titles Don/Donna.
If you go back to find the parents' marriage record you may seen that some of these names are from grandparents. And in some cases if a baby was not predicted to survive long he/she might be baptized with the names of many ancestors and/or favorite saints for protection.
In daily life the person might only go by one of these names familiarly (or perhaps none at all, adopting a nickname instead).
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