Collodi: Name of a Village or Pinocchio's Father's Name?

Many people ask if the Pistoiese hamlet close to Pescia, town of flowers, took its name from the author of Pinocchio or of the author of the famous children’s book
took his name from the hamlet, registered as he was as Carlo Lorenzini. It’s a mystery that we’ll reveal and explain... Carlo Lorenzini was actually a Florentine through and through born in Florence on 24 November 1826 to Domenico Lorenzini and Angiolina Orzali, both in the employ of the marquis Ginori Lisci and therefore residing in Castello, now a suburb of Florence. At this point let’s give you a short biography of the writer before solving the mystery and we have to say that the young and restless Carlo soon began to hang around with literary figures and journalists, but he was also fervent about the politics of 1848 amongst the Tuscan volunteers of the 1st War of Independence.

On his return to Florence, he established the satirical newspaper Il Lampione, which was abolished after just a few editions. After returning to the city of the Grand Duke, he wrote for the theatre and published a humorous historical guide, Un romanzo in vapore. From Florence to Livorno (A novel in steam from Florence to Livorno), which used the backdrop of the newly opened railway line, but he left again for the front in 1859 when the 2nd War of Independence broke out.

On his return to
Florence, he was appointed as a theatre censor by the provisional government, but his journalism work continued to be lively and particularly polemical with the adversaries of the new political race. It was during such a polemic with Eugenio Albèri that he adopted the pseudonym Carlo Collodi for the first time, taking the name of his mother’s birthplace.

He became successful later as it was only in July 1881 upon the publication of the first episode of ‘Storia di un burattino’ (A puppet’s tale) in the Giornale per i bambini (Children’s magazine) that the first of his bestsellers came out, which would go on to be published in a volume entitled The Adventures of Pinocchio in 1889. It’s now one of the most famous books in the world after The Bible and Koran and Carlo Lorenzini took the name of the Pistoiese town purely out of love for his mother.


(Portions of this article first appeared in "Toscana & Chianti News")
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