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Comment by phikappa

2 hours ago

Interesting case of double-layered false nominative determinism. Although foresta in Italian means "forest" and thus the surname would seem eminently plant-based, it actually means "foreigner", which I guess he also ended up being as Italian immigrant in the US. The etymology of forest and foreigner is closely related and means basically just "(from the) outside".

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phikappa

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rob74  2 hours ago

Wow, that's a really sneaky "false friend" in Italian! Especially since it even has the meaning of "forest-related" in other Latinic languages, e.g. in French route forestière = forest road.

  • phikappa  37 minutes ago

    I wouldn't call it so much a false friend as forest/foreign (and forfeit and I'm sure a bunch of other words) all coming from the same Latin "foris" root and being semantically related.

    In Italian, outside is just "fuori".

    You're a foreigner to what you've forfeited in the forest.