Milania

Milania is one of those faux-Italian female names coined by an American, in this case reality TV personality, cookbook author and Italian-American New Jersey resident Teresa Giudice (she did the same thing with Audriana). Aside from her first daughter Gia, the next three daughters all have fancy-pants girly-girl flowery four-syllable names: Gabriella, Milania and Audriana (the latter two being invented names meant to sound Italian). Most likely Giudice had the Italian city of Milan in mind when naming her third daughter Milania. Milan is one of those “twofer” names in that you get two etymologies out of a single name. For one, and most obviously, Milan is a place name referring to one of the largest cities in Italy. Originally settled by Celtic tribes centuries before Christ, Milan was known as Mediolanum which is a Latin name thought to be derived from ancient Celtic language elements, essentially meaning a settlement located in the “middle of a plain”. This would make sense as Milan is situated in the plains of the Lombardy region of Italy. Other sources suggest that the name is ultimately derived from a Celtic word denoting a sanctuary or religious center for the particular Celtic tribes who inhabited the ancient area. The Romans would conquer the Celtic settlement in the 3rd century B.C. and Mediolanum eventually became the capital of the Western Roman Empire (with Nicomedia representing the East). The Germanic Visigoths arrived in the early 5th century followed by the Huns a few decades later. The Germanic Ostrogoths sacked Milan during the Gothic Wars in the 6th century and the Lombards finally moved in during the latter half of the 6th century (also a Germanic tribe from which the region of Lombardy takes its name). When the Franks (another Germanic tribe) conquered the city in the 8th century, Milan became part of the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne. At some point, the Spaniards and then the Austrian’s took control before the city was finally annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in the 19th century. Strategically placed in the North of Italy, Milan is the gateway to the rest of the peninsula. It’s no wonder scores of tribes and nations fought for its possession. Aside from the clear association with the prominent Italian city, Milan is also a name of Slavic origin. The Slavic element “mil” means “gracious, dear”. In any case, the name Milania was basically introduced to Americans as the third daughter of Teresa Giudice on the hit Bravo TV show “The Real Housewives of New Jersey”. That year (2011) Milania appeared on the American female naming charts for the first time ever. Coincidence? We think not.