Crusca, 'improper' women's name decree: here's why

A bill that is 'certainly improper' in that it wants to prohibit by law, in public acts, the feminine names of certain professions. 'It is, therefore, pleasing that it is being withdrawn'. The rejection of the bill presented by the Lega Nord senator Manfredi Potenti came not only from the opposition but also from Professor Paolo D'Achille, president of the Accademia della Crusca. The League itself dismissed it as a personal initiative of Senator Potenti and announced that it had had the bill withdrawn.

Professor D'Achille recalls that legislative initiatives concerning the Italian language 'cannot be extemporaneous: they must be as shared as possible and never ideological. No one regulates individual or literary uses of the language. Instead, we must be cautious about innovations in legislation because laws have a strong social impact and must be comprehensible and clear, fitting into a tradition of writing that cannot be ignored'. Paolo D'Achille says that 'any masculine gender name in Italian can be turned to the feminine and referred to women. On the contrary, there are names of the feminine gender that cannot be turned to the masculine even if they refer to men'.

And it is not the first time that the Accademia della Crusca has emphasised the possibility of turning masculine gender names into feminine. The only official response on the subject from the Accademia della Crusca is dated 27 January 2023 and concerns a question posed to the Accademia by the Equal Opportunities Committee of the Governing Council of the Supreme Court, which asked for clarification "on the identification of grammatical and linguistic rules aimed at the development of an inclusive legal language". In its reply to the question, the Crusca, among the principles traditionally invoked to establish the rules or recommendations for a use of language that respects gender equality, mentions 'using the feminine gender for professional titles that refer to women'.

And he calls for 'avoiding the determinative article before feminine surnames, because it generates an asymmetry with masculine ones'. And he lists the feminine surnames of many legal and non-legal professions: magistrate, prefect, lawyer, architect, doctor, surgeon, marshal, captain, colonel, judge, non-commissioned officer, lieutenant, investigating judge, pilot, criminal or civil lawyer. And, again, yes to cavaliera, cancelliera, brigadiera, poetessa, rettrice, ambasciatrice, procuratrice, uditrice giudiziaria, questora, dottoressa, assessora, difensora, estensora, revisora. Then prosindaca, vicesindaca, deputy procurator, prorettrice vicaria, pubblica ministera.

The answer also specifies that the asterisk in place of the desinences with morphological value ("Dear* friends, all those who will receive this message...") must be "absolutely" excluded. No, therefore, to the asterisk that dulls masculine and feminine endings. Professor Paolo D'Achille himself, in his in-depth study 'An asterisk on gender', recalls that 'it is very true, as Nanni Moretti said in one of his films, that "words are important" (but so are spelling, phonetics, morphology, syntax) and often denounce sexist or discriminatory attitudes, both on a historical and individual level'. And that it is 'certainly right, and indeed praiseworthy, when we speak or write, to pay attention to linguistic choices related to gender, avoiding all forms of linguistic sexism'.