Andrea

History & meaning

Andrea is what Italian did with Andreas. The Greek name is transparent — andreios, manly or courageous, from anēr, man — and it belonged first to a Galilean fisherman, the brother of Simon Peter, whom the Eastern churches call the First-Called. Latin borrowed the Greek nominative as Andreas and filed it with its own first-declension nouns; Italian then trimmed the -s, as it did with every Latin ending, and arrived at Andrea. The same road produced Luca from Loukas and Nicola from Nicolaus. Crusaders returning from the sack of Constantinople carried the apostle's remains to Amalfi in 1208, which is why a small town on a cliff face keeps the feast of 30 November with unusual seriousness.

Now the ending, because it is the whole story of this name in English. Italian nouns in -o are usually masculine and those in -a usually feminine, and that rule is why an English speaker files Andrea next to Maria. But the exception is old and systematic. Latin's first declension, the -a declension, always contained masculine nouns — nauta a sailor, poeta a poet, agricola a farmer — and Greek supplied more, since Greek men's names in -ās entered Latin as -a. Italian inherited both groups whole. That is why il poeta, il papa, il pilota and il problema are masculine, and why Andrea, Luca, Nicola, Mattia, Elia and Battista are men's names. Gender lives in the article and the adjective, not the vowel: Andrea è bravo is a man, Andrea è brava is a woman. Outside Italy the logic never applied, so English, German, Spanish, Czech and Hungarian all took Andrea as the feminine of Andreas — and Italy, needing a feminine of its own, coined Andreina.

Why parents choose it

For a family with Italian roots, Andrea is the direct line to the apostle with none of the Anglo flatness of Andrew, and it sounds in English exactly as it sounds in Italian if you put the stress in the right place. The catch is not subtle: in the United States the name will be read as a daughter's, on forms, in classrooms and by every stranger, for life. Italian families in America have long solved this by using Andrea at home and Andrew on paper, or by moving it to the middle slot, where its sound survives and its gender never comes up.

Middle names for Andrea

The open final vowel wants a consonant to land on: Andrea Matteo, Andrea Vittorio, Andrea Paolo, Andrea Giuseppe. The middle names guide sets out the method in full.

Famous Andreas

Andrea Palladio designed the villas of the Veneto and, through his four books, most of the columned porches in the American South. Andrea del Verrocchio ran the Florentine workshop where Leonardo trained. Andrea Mantegna painted the ceiling that invented the illusionistic dome. Andrea Doria commanded Genoa's fleet in the sixteenth century and gave his name to the liner that sank off Nantucket in 1956. Living bearers include the tenor Andrea Bocelli and the midfielder Andrea Pirlo.

Consider instead

Andrew is the same apostle with no explaining to do in an English-speaking country. Andrés keeps the Latin sound and reads as male on sight. Alessandro sits in the same Italian register — long, warm, unmistakably from the peninsula — without asking anyone to relearn a grammar rule.