Anyone know what "Il Meneghello" means in English?

Abrac

Wasn't exactly sure where to put this. This seemed like it might be a good place to get an answer.

What does Il Meneghello mean? As in the Italian card makers in Milan. Is it "The Meneghello," and if so what does that mean?
 

gregory

I have a Very Large Italian dictionary.

It isn't in there.

Il Meneghino is; it means the Milanese Dialect.

Now when I tried google translate and let it "detect language" it informed me that Meneghello was in the Corsican language (but didn't manage to translate it...) And there are a LOT of Corsican villas by that name (google is FUN...)

I'd ask Cristina.....
 

Huck

The owner of the shop "Il Meneghello" is Oswaldo Menegazzi.

"And then we all visited the Master Magician, Oswaldo Menegazzi in his precious and marvellous shop Il Meneghello.
He has been retrieving ancient tarot decks and hand-making old and new tarot art since 1974."
http://www.tarot.net.nz/pages/talk.htm
Likely Menegazzi can explain the word Meneghello. A personal nick name perhaps.
 

Abrac

That's pretty much the conclusion I was coming to, it's a surname. Indeed a mystery.
 

gregory

That's pretty much the conclusion I was coming to, it's a surname. Indeed a mystery.
Why ? My maiden surname certainly has no meaning and I'm not sure my married name does either... Very many surnames don't.
 

Ross G Caldwell

I think the mystery is why Osvaldo Menegazzi chose the name for his business, rather than the existence or meaning of the name itself. It's probably something personal.

The "Mene" part is an abbreviation of "DoMENico", and various forms of the surname are diminutives of that, e.g. Meneguzzi, Menegazzi, Meneghini, Meneghello, etc.
 

blue_fusion

This website classifies it with other related surnames as meaning "From the first name Domenico, meaning: sacred to God": http://www.italyheritage.com/genealogy/surnames/etymology/m/

You can maybe ask an Italian etymologist? I used to think it was somehow related to Michaelangelo :D

Although Gregory is right, there are surnames which have no meaning or have meanings lost to antiquity.

(I am reminded of a clan of artists here with the wonderful surname Liongoren - I think they're the only people with such as surname. The background being, an ancestor of theirs had to put down his details on a census, but he wasn't very good at writing, so he wrote down Liongoren instead of Llaren).
 

Abrac

Ross I agree. Apparently it's named after a person as are theaters or hotels, The Hilton for example. It must mean something to Osvaldo, but I imagine a person would have to ask him or Cristina.

*This is just speculation but it might be short for something like The Meneghello Studio, or The Meneghello Tarot Shop, both hypothetical.

**It might be named after Luigi Meneghello (February 16, 1922 – June 26, 2007). The Wikipedia article is brief but informative. He was a writer and teacher on aspects of the Italian Renaissance. He was also active in anti-fascism during WWII. He could represent something to Menegazzi and maybe he wanted his shop to reflect his Spirit. Again, purely specualtive.

***And there's Virgil Meneghello Dinčić (1876-1944), a Croatian painter and art teacher.