italian names

[ste1607]

why is it that most italian names end in vowels

[noxlumos]

I would imagine that it's to designate gender and as it's a Catholic country the patronage of a Saint for your particular day in some instances.
Maria Mario
Nina Nino
Francesca Francisco
Vincenza Vincenzo
I am not certain about this by any means but it makes sense to me that this is the reason.

[Quizmonster]

I'm no expert in Italian, but it seems to me that Italian words in general - and not just names - seem most frequently to end in a vowel sound. If we British want to caricature an Italian - and, believe me, there is no racist/anti-ethnic intent in what I say - don't we just stick an 'a' sound on the end of his words? "I wanna slappa you face-a!" is the kind of thing I mean.

[jno]

probably a hangover from Latin, which attached endings on to words - many of them ending in vowels - where we would use prepositions before the words. We would say 'to Marius'; they said 'Mario'.

[aristotle]

All Italian words end in vowels except for a few recently borrowed words from English and other foreign languages e.g. sport, film.

[Octavius]

Many Italian surnames are basically variations on a root name, made different by the addition of various prefixes and suffixes. Especially common are endings with vowels enclosing double consonants (e.g. -etti, -illo).

The Italian preference for diminutives and pet names is the root behind many of the suffixes, as seen by the large number of Italian last names ending in -ini, -ino, -etti, -etto, -ello, and -illo, all of which mean "little." Other commonly added suffixes include -one meaning "big," -accio, meaning either "big" or "bad," and -ucci meaning "descendant of." Common prefixes of Italian surnames also have specific origins. The prefix "di" (meaning "of" or "from") is often attached to an given name to form a patronym. di Benedetto, for example, is the Italian equivalent of Benson (meaning "son of Ben") and di Giovanni is the Italian equivalent of Johnson (son of John). The prefix "di," along with the similar prefix "da" may also be associated with a place of origin (i.e the da Vinci surname referred to someone who originated from Vinci). The prefixes "la" and "lo" (meaning "the") often derived from nicknames (e.g. Giovanni la Fabro was John the smith), but also might be found attached to family names where it meant "of the family of" (e.g. the Greco family might become known as "lo Greco.")

[ThisSpace]

I think it is simply that they cannot pronounce a word without a vowel on the end. I could be wrong, however, but along the same lines, try and get a Spaniard to say "station" without pronouncing an "e" beforehand, as if to say the spanish "estacion".