Mussolini

Where it comes from

From the plural of Mussolino, a medieval personal name and double diminutive of Musso (also recorded as Muxo), with the patronymic suffix + -ini. The personal name Musso is of disputed origin, with several proposed derivations:

* A hypocoristic (shortened) form of the given name Giacomo (via *Iacomuzzo > *Muzzo > Musso);

* A descriptive nickname from Northern Italian dialectal muso (“face, snout”), from Latin Latin mūsum;

* Or from the Latin verb Latin mussāre (“to murmur, mumble”), which also yielded the medieval nickname Mussatus.

The name is well-documented in Emilian medieval archives (e.g., as Muxolinus or Muxolini since the late 13th century, such as Muxolinus de Musolinis in 1289 and Petrus Muxolinus de Argelata in 1297).

An alternative, popular folk etymology connects the name to mussola or mussolina (“muslin”) (denoting a weaver or merchant of the fabric), which ultimately derives from Arabic Arabic مَوْصِلِيّ (mawṣiliyy, “from Mosul”), from the city of Mussolo (“Mosul”) in northern Iraq. While this textile association was historically influential (even leading the municipality of Bologna to rename via dei Mussolini to via dei Tessitori in 1949), modern onomastic and toponymic research has shown it to be a false etymology.