The Portia Hypothesys

A weighty name

My parents came from a small town in Apulia, Southern Italy, a place swarming with ludicrous, anachronistic traditions. Harsh but true. One of those was (probably, still is) to give one’s children the names of their grandparents, in order of gender hierarchy (where male is – obviously! – the superior one), so that the first-borns should carry their paternal grandparents' names, the second-borns their maternal grandparents' ones. After two girls, two boys, or two kids of the same sex, anything goes, usually appellatives found in the Roman Martyrology - the more redolent of blood, tears, and fanciful methods of torture, the better.

I was my parents’ eldest daughter, and that’s how I was encumbered with the name of Porzia (the Italian spelling of Portia), my granny’s name from my father’s side. As if that wasn’t bad enough, my family name is Persio, hence the resulting alliterative cacophony that makes me wince to this day.

But let’s see what’s specifically wrong with the name Porzia. In Italian, it sounds like porco (pork/pig), whose feminine form porca is also an extremely offensive term (dirty/filthy woman and, of course, whore). As a matter of fact, it’s a Roman gentile name, more precisely, a nomen gentilicium, derived from – you guess it – porcus, pig.

(Incidentally, someone should study how the feminine forms of seemingly innocent nouns and adjectives in Italian ended up taking the meaning of prostitute. Another story for another day. For those of you who understand Italian, check this out.)

Now you get it, right? It’s not a mystery that Porzia isn’t a popular name in Italy, found only in a small area of Apulia. My granny inherited it in the same way as I did, from her granny, and so on, in a family, whose other unsavoury habits included greed and marriages between cousins. If I could go back in time, I would visit the first ever ancestors who came up with those brilliant ideas, give them a stern look, a baby name book, and an admonition, “Stop with the inbreeding, you’re not the flipping Habsburgs!”

I'll spare you the details about the misery I had to endure at school, or out in the world for that matter. To be fair though, I’ve been lucky enough to meet well-read people who could identify Portia as a Shakespearean heroine. There are two Portias, in fact: one in Julius Caesar, inspired by the historical figure of Brutus’ wife, and the fictional character of Portia, lady of Belmont, in The Merchant of Venice.

This comedy, as you can infer from its plot, is regarded as problematic for its anti-Semitism. But it is way more complex than this. It leaves us modern readers and viewers with questions, such as why do we expect, and even demand mercy and fairness from people treated like subhumans, who were never allowed to appeal to mercy and fairness for themselves? And how can we still think – more than 400 years later, after the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, after the terrible lessons of the Holocaust and all the fights for human rights – that some people do not deserve to be treated with dignity and respect? Should we respond to cruelty with cruelty?

So much to ponder. Therefore, I’m still ambivalent about my name, even though I’m flattered that it recalls such a quick-witted and charming young woman, to whom Shakespeare gives this remarkable monologue on mercy (act 4, scene 1):

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The thronèd monarch better than his crown.

His scepter shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptered sway.

It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute to God Himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this:

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much

To mitigate the justice of thy plea,

Which, if thou follow, this strict court of Venice

Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.