What is in a name?

Back when we got married, my wife and I talked about name change issues. She would have taken my last name if I had felt strongly about it, but I didn't. In fact, I always found my last name a little weird. I've gone through my whole life spelling it over and over, correcting the pronunciation etc.

Around the time we got married, my grandmother and independently, a great uncle told me the story of our name. It was probably bull, but they both told essentially the same story:

Our family was originally named Campanelli. There was some other, unrelated to us, Campanelli's who were bandits in that district. So, in order to distance themselves from the bad-Campanelli's, the good ones renamed themselves Pecchia. Here the stories diverged: My grandmother said they picked Pecchia because it is shorter than Campanelli. Yes, it was so ridiculous that I couldn't help making a guffaw. My uncle had a better, if not necessarily true story. He said that Pecchia means something along the lines of hard-worker, like a honey bee. This at least makes sense since a hard worker is kind of the opposite of a bandit.

My wife and I both like the sound of Campanelli and entertained the notion of us both changing to that. More out of inertia than anything else, we never bothered. Besides that, I don't look at all like a typical Italian so it would have been weird to trade in my old name for one that was even more woppy-sounding.

In the end, after three children and 17 years of marriage, my wife just completed the arduous task of changing her name. I didn't care at the time we got married and it was her idea to make the change but I won't lie--it pleases me.

Oh yes: My theory for where Campanelli came from is that the village my people come from is called Campodimele. Just about everybody there is named Pecchia or Difonzo.