Nave is a town and comune in the province of Brescia, in Lombardy, Italy. The commune is bounded by the communes of Brescia, Caino, Lumezzane and Bovezzo. It is located in the Garza valley.
The origin of the name Nave (Nae in the local Lumbard slang) is not certain. Some maintain it comes from nava (cfr. English navel) meaning the valley basin in which Nave sits, others think it is a contraction from Latin nam vallis, wide valley . Another possibility is it comes from Latin navis meaning ship (cfr. Italian nave with the same meaning) due to the overall shape of the town when seen from the Maddalena mountain. Notwithstanding this hypothesis being held as improbable, the coat of arms of the town sports a ship on it.
Originally Nave consisted in a series of loosely connected urban sections: Nave proper (Nave centro, Nae), Campanile (Campanil), Cortine (Cǜrtine), Dernago (Dernac), Mitria (Mitria), Monteclana (Monteclana), Muratello (Möradel) which eventually connected together following urbanization. This is reflected by the fact that Nave does not have a main square, which is very uncommon for an Italian town.
A Lombard language tongue twister plays on Nae being both the name of the town and a past tense of the verb nà (English to go, Italian andare): en dè che nae a Nae go 'ncontrat el pret de Nae, 'l ma dìt en do che nae me go dìt che nae a Nae, which can be translated as: I was going to Nave when I met the priest of Nave, he asked me where I was going and I told him I was going to Nave.