Basiano

The coat of arms of Basiano illustrates a mistaken etymology. It shows Saint Basil and, in the background, a monastery, because for a long time it was believed that the village's name came from a monastery of that saint's order. In fact the name is a prædial one, coming from the Roman owner of the estate, a certain Basilius, with the suffix -anus meaning belonging to: no saints, just a landowner. The arms, however, were granted in 1983 exactly as they are, and the saint goes on representing a village that owes its name to a Roman landlord.

Three thousand six hundred and thirty-nine inhabitants in the metropolitan city of Milan. The name has passed through a thousand years of variants: Paxiliano in 893, Basilianum in 1192, Baxiliano in 1398, Basiliano in 1466, Baxiano in 1504, and only in the eighteenth century Basiano. The Codex Longobardorum calls it Phara Basiliani, because in the sixth century a Lombard fara had settled here: few of them are attested in Lombardy. At the place called Monastero, in the nineteen-eighties, a Roman sarcophagus was found, and it now serves as an altar in the village cemetery.