THE INHABITANTS of a small Italian town where 8,000 residents share the same surname have won a legal battle to use their nicknames, including “Fat”, “Mad” and “Peasant”, on all official documents.
For more than 200 years, the people of Chioggia near Venice, have used the nicknames to distinguish between distantly related families, but they were never officially recognised.
Now, following a decree from the interior ministry, families in the town will be allowed to adopt their soubriquet as a second, official surname. “We fought hard for this so we can avoid a lot of confusion, as well as making filling out forms less complicated,” said the mayor, Romano Tiozzo, whose family nickname is “Pagio”, or “straw” in local dialect; his ancestors’ were straw sellers.
In many small Italian towns where local families have stayed put down the centuries, the entire population often shares just a few names. Chioggia, at the south end of the Venice lagoon, is an extreme case, with 8,000 Boscolos and 5,000 Tiozzos out of 52,000 people.
Tiozzo’s opponent in the last mayoral election was Lucio Tiozzo “Fasiolo”, dialect for “bean”.
Interior ministry undersecretary Michelino Davico told the Corriere della Sera: "If we find similar situations in other towns we will also consider sorting them out."