How did "Italian" and "Italic" develop different meanings?

Question

Although English is not my mothertongue, I am pretty sure the adjective for the modern country Italy is Italian as in Italian restaurant or Italian cars. I have just used the italic font for the purpose of emphasis. When I look up this word in the dictionary the original meaning of italic does appear to be Italian; capitalized in this case.

When and why did this diversion happen between Italian and Italic? What is the background of the interesting shift of the meaning of the latter to indicating a style of computer fonts?

Answer 1

Per Etymonline:

italic 1610s (adj.), 1670s (n.) "italic type," from Latin italicus "Italian"; so called because it was introduced in 1501 by Aldus Manutius, printer of Venice (who also gave his name to Aldine), and first used in an edition of Virgil dedicated to Italy. Earlier (1570s) the word was used for the plain, sloping style of handwriting, as opposed to Gothic.

Per Fonts.com

Aldus Manutius’ italic type evolved from a writing style that had become popular by the end of the 15th century with the educated class, including professional scribes, in southern Italy. Its heritage can be traced back to Niccolo de Niccoli, an Italian scholar of the early 15th century. De Niccoli started to oblique and add flourishes to his letters when he wished to write in a faster more relaxed fashion than usual. By mid-century, other scholars began to imitate his writing. Manutius commissioned typeface designer Francesco Griffo da Bologna to develop a cursive type for a new series of small books he was planning to produce. ...[O]ther printers felt obliged to produce their own books in this new typestyle. The problem was that Manutius would not sell his new fonts to the competition. So Manutius’ contemporaries did what has become a common practice in the history of type design – they copied the designs they could not buy. Not wishing to call attention to their plagiarism, but still needing to give the new offering a name, Manutius’ competitors chose “italic,” after Italy, the country where it originated.

Here is a picture of Niccolo's writing:

Compare to the norm before Niccolo:

Close up: see the words that comes in, of, to th(?) pharisees and note the predominantly vertical strokes.

This is from a work made in the middle of the fourteenth century in Italy (from a book of astrology, British Library):

Answer 2

According to Etymonline it was first used in the 16th century by A Venetian printer and at that time it was used to contrast with Gothic style.

Italic:

• 1610s (adj.), 1670s (n.) "italic type," from Latin italicus "Italian" (see Italian); so called because it was introduced in 1501 by Aldus Manutius, printer of Venice (who also gave his name to Aldine), and first used in an edition of Virgil dedicated to Italy. Earlier (1570s) the word was used for the plain, sloping style of handwriting, as opposed to Gothic.

Ngram:

Answer 3

The important distinction in Italic is between Italic and Roman typefaces.

Roman typefaces were derived from Humanist Bookhand, thought to have been originated by Poggio Bracciolini around 1400 and formalized as a typeface by Nicholas Jenson. Roman in this sense was based upon Roman capitals and Carolingian minuscule, which some Humanists thought was an older, Roman hand.

Italic typefaces, by contrast, are derived from Humanistic cursive, which arises from Gothic chancery scripts and is influenced by many of the elements of Humanist bookhand. Since this was the Italian style of writing, as opposed to the Roman style of writing, we call the slanty cursive-derived hand Italic and the formal book-hand Roman. It was transformed into a typeface by Aldus Manutius, and copies of it came to be called Italic to distinguish from traditional Gothic scripts, which became Fraktur, and were used in Germany up until WWII.

For examples of both, take a look at: https://www.pinterest.com/larkvi/humanist-roman-and-italic/

Answer 4

The word "Italian" can be used not only to identify people or things related to Italy, but also to identify a language which is used in that country. Describing a visual style of writing or printing using a word which can also refer to a language would be a recipe for confusion. A calligrapher or printer asked to reproduce a document in italic would proceed quite differently from one who asked to reproduce it in Italian.

The term "roman" does not have the same issue, since although the term "Roman" is used to describe people or things related to Rome, the name of the predominant language which was spoken in Rome is "Latin", not Roman. Thus, someone who is given a document printed in an italic or Gothic font and asked for a roman version would recognize that the request was for a visual style of type, rather than a language.

Answer 5

I suppose that italian comes from Italy as a nation while italic comes from the geographical region; In fact in 1600 there isn't Italy but the italic peninsula.