Un’indagine linguistica sull’ittionimia locale di Ostia

The article shows the data of a dialectal investigation conducted with three fishermen of Ostia (Rome), a marine area in the suburbs of Rome that lies south of the Tiber’s mouth and overlooks the Thyrrhenian Sea. A corpus of fish names, fishing and nautical terms, based on the Mediterranean Linguistic Atlas (ALM), is given to the interviewees in order to verify the status of Roman dialect in the field of ichthyonomy. After a brief historical and geographical framework of Ostia, the paper lingers on the methodology of the investigation and examines the data from both the general and particular perspective. The results highlight the decline of some Roman terms replaced by Italian words, the survival of other ones recorded in the Roman lexicography tradition, and the presence of lexical innovations due to the evolution of Roman dialect or to the linguistic influence from South Italy. In appendix a synoptic table illustrates all the terms examined and allows to compare the Italian words with the answer of the interviewees.