RENEE CARUSO

French: from the Late Latin name Renata, feminine of Renatus ‘reborn’, used by early Christians as a baptismal name celebrating spiritual rebirth in Christ. The name is also used in the English-speaking world, often without the accent and in a highly Anglicized pronunciation (compare Reenie).

Italian: nickname from caruso ‘close-cropped’ (Latin cariosus ‘decayed’, also ‘smooth’, ‘bald’). This word was also used in the more general sense ‘boy’, ‘lad’, since in the Middle Ages young men of fashion sometimes wore their hair much shorter than was the prevailing style. In the Girgenti area of Sicily the term was a metonymic occupational name for a worker in the sulfur pits, since such workers were required to wear their hair short.