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This oral history interview was given in New York in 1 938, and gives a glimpse of how nicknames were established among Italian immigrants when they returned to Italy with their stories of America. Nicknames are an important element in the folklore of an ethnic group. The custom of taking a nickname has a long history in Italy. For example, the Italian Renaissance painter Michaelangelo Merisi (1571-1610) was nicknamed Caravaggio because he was born in the northern Italian town of Caravaggio. Italian nicknames were often derived from habits or events that came to characterize an individual to their community, as this document shows.

Italian immigrant Vincent Viola D'Atri recounts how his uncle was given the nickname "Shut Up" by his friends. His uncle was one of more than five million Italians who became Americans according to immigration records. The largest Italian immigration wave occurred between 1880 and 1920,...