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The onomastic source of Silvia and Nerina, two young women who died young but live on in two of Leopardi's Canti, has been unanimously identified by scholars in Torquato Tasso's Aminta. Without denying this hypothesis, my paper examines the rich tradition that the two names boast in classical and humanistic poetry both in Latin and in the vernacular, especially in the pastoral genre. However, I suggest that, along with literary texts, Leopardi consulted ornithological treatises and derived from them a number of onomastic suggestions, as well as several features that the two women - like the poet as he portrays himself in Il passero solitario - share with the birds to whom he dedicated a warm Elogio in the Operette morali and many notes in the Zibaldone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his "Sonetti Romaneschi", Giuseppe Gioachino Belli speaks, not in person, but through a series of anonymous, lower-class characters. Critics have tried to identify those sonnets in which the wily poet hides behind the mask of the speaker to whom he often lends details of his biography and ideas. This paper examines the use of the poet's two names (Giuseppe and Gioachino), their familiar form (Peppe) and his initials (ggb, encrypted in the number 996). The author analyses the texts, showing that on one hand the poet aimed to represent objectively the life of the common people, while on the other remaining aware of his own poetic personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the nicknames, or terms of endearment, created by Gabriele d'Annunzio in letters to friends and collaborators, painters and engravers especially in the years of the Vittoriale, through which the poet created particular intellectual and artistic relationships with them (for example, Benigno Palmerio, Gian Carlo Maroni, Guido Cadorin, Napoleone Martinuzzi, Pietro Chiesa, Renato Brozzi, Adolfo de Karolis and his daughters). Some of these nicknames are an expression of the 'Franciscanism' which d'Annunzio delighted in as an author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]