Cornicello, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 for "little horn", is an amulet

Amulet

An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...

 worn to protect against the evil eye

Evil eye

The evil eye is a look that is believed by many cultures to be able to cause injury or bad luck for the person at whom it is directed for reasons of envy or dislike...

. In the Southern Italian Dialects

Southern Italian

Southern Italian , or Napoletano-Calabrese, is a group of Italo-Dalmatian Romance dialects spoken in Southern Lazio, Southern Marche, Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Basilicata, Apulia, and Northern Calabria....

, it is called cuornuciello or variants thereof.

Origins and styles

The Cornicello is an Italian amulet of good luck used to protect the wearer from the evil-eye curse. It is a twisted horn-shaped charm often made of gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

, silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

, bone, or red coral

Coral

Corals are marine animals in class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual "polyps". The group includes the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.A coral "head" is a colony of...

. Originally cornicelli resembled the twisted horn of an African eland

Taurotragus

Taurotragus, commonly called Eland, is a genus of antelopes of the African savannah, containing two species: the Common Eland and the Giant Eland...

, though over the years they have become stylized and less horn-like. A regionally popular amulet, they are primarily found in Italy and in America among descendents of Italian immigrants. According to some Calabrese

Calabria

Calabria , in antiquity known as Bruttium, is a region in southern Italy, south of Naples, located at the "toe" of the Italian Peninsula. The capital city of Calabria is Catanzaro....

 traditions, the horn was once modeled after a chili pepper

Chili pepper

Chili pepper is the fruit of plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae. The term in British English and in Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia and other Asian countries is just chilli without pepper.Chili peppers originated in the Americas...

, due to its abundance in the region. This was confirmed on Lidia's Italy

Lidia Bastianich

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich is an American chef, author, and restaurateur....

.

See also

Related to the corno is the mano cornuta or "horned hand." This is an Italian hand-gesture (or an amulet imitative of the gesture) that can be used to indicate that a man has been cuckolded ("wears the horns") and also to ward off the evil eye. Mano means "hand" and corno means "horn."