Paolo Atzeni

Misspellings and misunderstandings

My last name is Atzeni. It has a Sardinian origin (search the Web with "atzeni villaggio" or "atzeni origine cognome" to see more), as testified by the "tz", which never appear together in Italian except for proper names from Sardinia. In fact, I am one of the few Italians who are used to spell there name even in Italy (and therefore I have no surprise when a spelling is needed abroad), and people ask me whether it is a foreign name and where it comes from. Common misspellings for it (abroad as well as in Italy) are Azzeni, Azteni, and Atenzi.

My first name is Paolo, with an "o" as the third letter, and I often see it misspelled in "Paulo" by foreigners. Indeed, being the Italian for Paul, it is a very common name in Italy.

Currently, I am a professor at Università Roma Tre, which could be defined as the "Third State University in Rome", and was founded in 1992 as part of the process of reducing the size of Università di Roma "La Sapienza", the oldest university in the city (once known simply as "Università di Roma"). All the founding faculty members, including me, were with "La Sapienza" at founding time (November 1, 1992), and most of us kept their teaching duties at "La Sapienza" for a few years there (waiting for our courses to be activated) and kept an office there (waiting for our offices, which were ready a bit later). Therefore, between 1992 and 1996, I used the correct affiliation ("Università Roma Tre") but with a mailing address at "La Sapienza". Therefore, I often got listed (for example in PCs) with the wrong affiliation. In general, I prefer the affiliation to be in Italian ("Università Roma Tre"; if you want to avoid the special character à you may replace it with a', thus writing "Universita' Roma Tre"); if you really want it to be in English, you should write "Roma Tre University".