Some Names and Their Meanings
- Meschita derives from Arabic Masjid meaning Mosque through the Castilian "mezquita".
- Guzzetta is the altered name Achuzzath, a Jewish word that means "possession, property, estate".
- Cafarone, corruption of Cafarnao or the local Hebrew dialectization of "Qaphar Aharon", namely "The Hamlet of Aaron" (maybe a Jewish religious leader, a rich or prominent Jewish personage from Catanzaro or the simple respectful eponym to remember Moses' brother).
- Rabato (or Rabbato) is the Sicilian arabicized translation of Rabāṭ (literally a Stronghold or a Fortress). The ancient fortified zone of Erice was mainly populated by Jews.
- Cartellone should not be explained by its literal Italian meaning notwithstanding a local legend asserting that a "big placard" was placed in the quarter's main entrance to make easily manifest to Christians the Jewish presence in it. Nowadays, visible traces of such "large signboards" or "showy signposts", if any, have completely vanished or been removed. According to another folk legend the houses' doors and their outer facings were adorned with little tablets reproducing the Mosaic Laws or a few precepts of Torah. That might be the simple result of Christian misinterpretation of the mezuzah, where little scrolls are kept in the doorposts. The most likely explanation is related to a typical Modica's craftsmanship. Cartellone is the male augmentative of medieval Latin word "cartallus, cartella" that qualified a "woven hamper" or more precisely, in this case, a "big woven hamper" (to identify an entire specific category of workingmen and workingwomen). Aforetime, in that area, the production of wicker baskets was chiefly monopolized by Jewish basket-makers and today many craftsmen of Cartellone still practise this kind of patient traditional handiwork. A last surmise would be a likely dialectal mangling of an Hebrew toponym called "Qiryath Alon" or "Qiryath Aloni" (The Village of the Oak or The Village of Alon).
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