Bardi (surname)
Bardi is an Italian surname that originated in Florence, with the predecessors of the Bardi family. Originally a patronymic, it derives from the name Berardo.
Origin
Bardi originated as a patronymic. The first record of the name was with Pagano di Bardo, who made a donation to a Florentine church in 1112. In his name, di Bardo refers to the given name Berardo,[1] a Germanic name that was one of many common in northern Italy in the middle ages.[2] Bardo's family was from Antalla (in the wider Florence area), where they had owned the castle Ruballa, and was present in the commune of Florence from the 11th century, owning much of the neighbourhood of Pidiglioso; this area was later renamed Via de' Bardi after them.[1][3] The surname had become inherited as Bardi by the end of the 12th century, when the family was granted the hereditary title "count of Vernio".[4]
Various Tuscan family names that were adopted in the middle ages end with –i. According to Joseph G. Fucilla in Our Italian Surnames, the process of adopting a patronymic as a single family name "went one step further" in central and northern Italy (including Tuscany) in the middle ages, compared to elsewhere in Italy. When a family gained power within their local area, a collective surname would often be used to refer to every member, altering the ending to the plural –i.[2]
An alternate origin of the name as a toponymic variation of Lombardy is accounted as false by Agostino Ademollo in his history of Florence; Ademollo wrote that some of the family said they came from Lombardy to Florence via Genoa, but that this was only claimed because there was a Lombard family in Genoa that was high-ranking.[1]
History
The Bardi name was established by 1164, when the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, awarded the now-commune Vernio to Alberto Bardi, along with the hereditary title count, making this line European nobility.[4] In the 1290s, the Bardi established banks in England, and they were one of the main European banking families by the 1320s.[5]
Ademollo asserted that "there is no family in Florence that had as many branches as the Bardi".[1] By the mid-14th century, there were many Bardi in Florence, with Florence historian John M. Najemy saying most of them by this point would not be involved with the operations of the bank. Surnames were still not common in Florence at the time, with a relatively small percentage of the population using them in 1345; Bardi was one of the most common by a significant margin.[6] Sculptor Donatello's (b. 1386) surname was Bardi, but any relation to the bankers would have been distant.[7] In 1427, when surnames were becoming more common,[6] there were 45 Bardi homes south of the Arno (and 15 elsewhere in Florence); Carlo M. Cipolla wrote that remaining localised in one area suggested there was family cohesion between the branches.[8]
People
Bardi family
- Contessina de' Bardi (1390–1473), wife of Cosimo de' Medici
- Giovanni de' Bardi (1534–1612), count of Vernio
- Robert de Bardis (fl. 1336), Chancellor of the University of Paris; known as Roberto in Italy, he was the nephew of Geri di Ricco de' Bardi (exiled after the Battle of Montaperti)[3]
Others
- Danio Bardi (1937–1991), Italian water polo player
- Donatello (1386–1466), Italian Renaissance sculptor
- Donato de' Bardi (d. c. 1451), Italian Quattrocento painter
- Francesco Bardi (b. 1992), Italian footballer
- Mario Bardi (1922–1998), Italian painter
- Vito Bardi (b. 1951), Italian general and politician
There were also unconfirmed reports that Uberto Lanfranchi (d. 1137), Archbishop of Pisa, was the son of a Bardo.[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e Ademollo, Agostini (1845). Marietta de' Ricci, ovvero Firenze al tempo dell'assedio racconto storico di Agostino Ademollo: Vol 3 (in Italian) (2nd ed.). Florence: Stabilimento Chiari. pp. 1135–1152.
- ^ a b Fucilla, Joseph Guerin (1949). Our Italian Surnames (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company (published 1987). pp. 14–15, 20–21. ISBN 978-0-8063-1187-6.
- ^ a b Ross, Janet (1905). Florentine Palaces and Their Stories. London: J. M. DENT & CO. pp. 39–42.
- ^ a b Pernis, Maria Grazia; Schneider Adams, Laurie (2006). Lucrezia Tornabuoni De' Medici and the Medici Family in the Fifteenth Century. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
- ^ "Banking in the Middle Ages". End of Europe's Middle Ages. Applied History Research Group / University of Calgary. 1997. Archived from the original on 2013-12-25. Retrieved 16 Dec 2013.
- ^ a b Najemy, John M. (2008-04-15). A History of Florence, 1200–1575. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 9–10. ISBN 978-1-4051-7846-4.
- ^ Coonin, A. Victor, Donatello and the Dawn of Renaissance Art, 2019, Reaktion Books, ISBN 978-1-78914-130-6. p. 18
- ^ Cipolla, Carlo M. (1994). Tre storie extra vaganti. Bologna: Il Mulino. pp. 6–7. ISBN 88-15-04571-6.