Three words that Venice gave to the world

When talking about Venice, I want to talk about in three words.

The whole planet knows them.
But almost no one knows, where they came from.

Ciao. Ghetto. Quarantena.

Three words.
Three completely different stories.
And one Venice.

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🇮🇹 CIAO

The friendliest word on earth literally means "slave".

It was born from Venetian s-ciavo vostro — “your slave,” a polite formula when meeting, similar to our old “your humble servant.”

And itself s-ciavo goes back to medieval Latin sclavus, which meant at the same time "Slav" and "slave".

In the early Middle Ages, a significant portion of the people sold in Mediterranean markets came from Slavic lands. Venice was a key hub for this trade.

Over time, the long formula of politeness was reduced to one short word.

S-ciavo → ciao.

And a remarkable transformation took place: a word once associated with slavery completely lost its original meaning and became one of the friendliest greetings in the world.

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🧱 GHETTO

1516.

The Venetian Senate decrees that the city's Jews must live in one quarter.

The site chosen was in the northwest of Venice, where the city's foundries used to be.

In Venetian the foundry was called geto — from gettare, "to pour", "to cast metal".

This is how the name of the area appeared.

And then the word ghetto It spread far beyond the borders of Venice and entered into many languages of the world, gradually acquiring new meanings that the Venetians of the 16th century, of course, could not even imagine.

The quarter itself still exists today. Ghetto di Venice.

And it has one interesting feature.

This is a place with some of the tallest buildings in Venice.

Why?

Because there was practically no room to build in width.

That's why we had to build upwards.

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⚕️ QUARANTENA

And here we will have to correct the popular version.

The first to introduce quarantine was not Venice, but Ragusa – today’s Dubrovnik.

On July 27, 1377, local authorities decreed that those arriving from infected areas must undergo thirty days in isolation, before entering the city.

By that time, the Black Death had already wiped out a huge portion of Europe's population.

Thirty days were called Trentina.

Venice, which traded with virtually the entire Mediterranean and was therefore particularly afraid of the spread of the plague, subsequently increased the period to forty days.

Quaranta giorni.

Forty days.

Quarantena.

Why exactly forty?

It is believed that symptoms of the disease may have appeared during this period.

But the number forty also had a deep symbolic meaning:
forty days of fasting,
forty years in the desert,
forty days of the flood.

IN In 1423 Venice opened its first permanent hospital for the isolation of arriving passengers on the island of Santa Maria di Nazareth.

The word itself lazzaretto, by the way, also has several versions of its origin - it is associated either with the name of the island of Nazareth, or with the name of Lazarus, the patron saint of lepers.

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Three words. One lagoon.

A greeting that grew out of slavery.

The name of a neighborhood that has become a symbol of isolation.

A medical term the world re-learned in 2020.

The Venetian Republic ceased to exist in In 1797.

And her dictionary still works.

And perhaps this is where Venice's special strength lies.

She left the world not only palaces, paintings, canals and bridges.

She left words.

The words we use often without even realizing that there was once a very specific story behind them.

Here it is, the linguistic power of Venice.

That's why I advocate so much for a careful attitude towards language.

Because sometimes One word is a whole story.

🇮🇹 One word. And the story behind it.