The next in the series of educational presentations organised by Din l-Art Helwa will be a lecture by Prof. Godfrey Wettinger on place-names and surnames in Malta’s medieval history.

Ever since the time of Commendatore Abela, Maltese historians used random references to Maltese place-names that abound in the islands of Malta and Gozo in order to illustrate their reconstructions of Maltese medieval history.

In this way they have spun all kinds of legends and tales which do honour to Malta and to the Maltese and render the past more vivid by lending a sense of place to our collective memory.

More recently, with the increase in the seriousness of historical studies as well as in the professional understanding of the real significance of place-names, surnames, and nicknames, a radical revision set in. Professor Wettinger has devoted most of his life and energy in precisely these studies. In this highly-interesting lecture he offers a summary of his views on the subject.

Godfrey Wettinger, who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Malta where he still lectures, has several publications to his name, particularly The Jews of Malta in the Late Middle-Ages, Slavery in the Islands of Malta and Gozo and Place-names of the Maltese Islands ca. 1300-1800.

He has also written a long list of papers, several of which had a strong impact on the history of Malta, especially The Militia List of 1419, Clerical Concubinage, Lost Villages, Popular Attitudes to the Government of the Order and Agriculture in Malta in the Late Middle Ages. In 1993 he published in Palermo the minutes and other documents of the medieval town council of Malta, and before that in 1968 he co-authored with Fr. Michael Fsadni Peter Caxaro’s Cantilena, a poem in Medieval Maltese.

The lecture will be held on Thursday at 6pm at the Judge Caruana Curran Hall at the offices of Din l-Art Helwa, 133 Melita Street, Valletta. Those wishing to attend are invited to be seated by 5.45pm. Admission is free of charge.