So that should have been Johnny the Drummer?
Systranet , my usual translation tool, doesn't translate the
-ino or
-ini directly. It translates
tamburino and
tamburini from Italian to English as
tamburino and
tamburini, meaning that it can't translate them, so I had to play around a bit until I tried
tamburo and saw that it came up as
drum. I just tried translating
drummer into Italian but it couldn't translate it. It translates both
baby and
child as
bambino. It translates
bambo (the presumed root of
bambino) as
fool, but it translates
fool from English into Italian as
sciocco. All I can say is, what kind of fool am I?
It happens: I too, when I reverse the translation enquiry, I do not always get back to the original word, English or Italian that was.
I suppose it has to do with prevailing usage.
With Babylon, I get
tamburino right (drummer), but not the second meaning (small drum) and no responde for the plural
tamburini. Yet
tamburino (small drum) is known and referred to by Babylon in a reverse enquiry to translate 'drummer' (player of a
tamburo or a
tamburino, ie a drum or a small drum).
We generally use
bambino for 'baby' and 'child'. A 'newborn' is a
neonato and when we need to be more specific, 'baby' is a
bebè.
Originally
bambino was the now obsolete
bambo, now used, more frequently in the form
bamba, fig. to indicate a fool.
Yes, Drummers is probably more appropriate for a surname.
The first known record of a cognomen Tamburini is dated back to the 13th century when a drummer was knighted for gallantry (clearly an ancestor of mine
). In this case, the given plural might have been a reference to back generations of drummers in the family or, although both could be true, Italian for 'The Drummer' or 'Mac Drummer' or 'Von Drummer'.
Of course, this kind of mechanics were independently repeated when church and/or registry records were introduced, just as it happened in most other countries.
