Greetings to all from South Italy

[Perretti]

Ciao, Perretti, and welcome to X Marks from the bottom end of Africa.
I see that Potenza is in Basilicata, and once was part of Lucania.
The Greeks were early settlers there (building cities alongside native peoples), and until the Arab conquest, that region was still Greek-speaking.
St Luke’s name (Loukas) means “man of Lucania”.
My father was in Italy during the war, but was only briefly that far south. He landed at Brindisi and went into the front line at Monte Cassino.
He was wounded at Monte Stanco, and his regiment pushed through to the Po.
Regards,
Mike

Wow, you're really well informed! Yes, Potenza is in Basilicata, the acient Lucania, also called so for another reason: the "Lucani" were an Osco-Sabellica population who arrived in a woody region, Eastern, if compared to their original country, so for them was the place where the sun rises, and the glades in the forest made it gain the name "lake of light". This is explained by the greek "leùkos" (white) and the latin "luca"(glade).
Anyway in WW2 there were only a few fascists-nazists in our region, it's not considered an important country.

[Mike_Oettle]

Hi, Peretti – it is always good to learn more. Thank you for that information.
And I am glad to know there were so few right-wingers in Basilicata during the war. It probably meant a smooth transition from Mussolini to the King.
The word leùkos has at least two applications in South Africa.
The Western Cape has a Mediterranean climate, but is characterised a unique flora, known as fynbos. The characteristic bush of the fynbos is the protea (many species) and a variety of related genera. Two among those are the genus Leucospermum and the genus Leucadendron.
The flowers of the Leucospermum plants are called pincushion proteas, while the Leucadendrons bear cones. Of course, -dendron means tree, but in fact only one species in that genus is a tree: Leucadendron argenteum, commonly known as the silver tree or witteboom. The others only grow to bush size.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucadendron
My father felt very much at home in Italy, since the mountains there are very like those in the Western Cape.
In fact he described the mountain range on the western side of the Monte Cassino battle front as being much like the mountains of the Boland. I was flabbergasted when he told me that the Moroccan Ghoums, fighting with the Free French, had covered 30km a day going through those mountains.
Regards,
Mike