Someday
Someday, I am going to buy my parents and my brother and myself copies of this print.
The genus of that tree (and others in Africa) is the same as my last name. “The genus name Boscia honours a French professor of agriculture, Louis A.G. Bosc (1777-1850).”
As far as my own history goes, it’s a bit of a mystery. My ancestors are Albanian-Italians from the Avellino province of Italy. We’ve got some pretty rabid internet groups devoted to our common ancestry and roots in Greci.
My Arabic professor in college thought that we probably emigrated to Italy during the Ottoman invasion in the 1400s, and “Boscia” is an Italianization of the Turkish/Arabic title “pasha”. Who knows? I should try to convince an SCA herald to try to find a date for it. So far we’ve got it back to about 1740 in Italy, with Carlo Boscia, my great(x5)-grandfather.
I always thought it was related to woods or forest because it’s similar to the Spanish word “Bosque” – which is apparently actually Germanic in origin (“bosque= forest, woods: from Catalan of Provençal of Old French bosc, from Germanic (*)busk- “brush, underbrush, thicket” (source of Old High German busc).”)
And then of course there’s the pronunciation – my family says Bahshah. Other Boscias say Bohshah or Bohskah or Bohskeeya or Bahskeeya. There aren’t a lot of Boscias in the world but those that are directly related agree on how their family says their name.
The Boshahs may be proper – there’s a MLB player named Mike Scioscia and his last name is Shohshah.
Currently, Boscia is also a line of Japanese skin care products (they’re pretty good).
Look what you started, Mau!
