Family, religiosity and ethnical identity in the practices of transmission of baptismal names in a group of Italian immigrants

Abstract

The present paper has the objective of analyzing the construction of the ethnic and cultural identity of a group of Italian immigrants and their descendants who settled in Campo Largo, Paraná, Brazil, between 1878 and 1937. We assume that the identity of a group appears when inter-ethnic contact occurs or when one group feels the need to affirm itself over the others. In this context we analyzed the practices of transmission of baptismal names as signs of the construction of ethnical identity. We sought to verify how the group being studied built its identity under the guidance of the symbolic and cultural references of the land they left and how the process of change took place in view of their new realities and the cultural contacts established with the Brazilians. To guide this analyze, we based our work mainly on parish registers (records of baptisms, marriages and deaths) that were systematized by the methodology of family reconstitution, based on historical demography. This analysis enabled us to note in the baptismal names the predominance of rural traits typical of the homeland of the immigrants that symbolically linked them with the land of their ancestors. These elements were of great importance for defining the identity of the group as being both Italian and Brazilian.