The study centres around a diachronic qualitative/quantitative investigation (for the period 1876 to 1991) of the forenames of the residents of Rome, a city with a highly variegated population in terms of social classes, cultural affiliations and migration flows. In addition it provides a comparative synchronic analysis of the corresponding public records office data for the residents of Bologna and Palermo as examples of the North and the mezzogiorno of Italy respectively, regions which display tendencies diametrically opposed to those of Rome in onomastic terms. The study is thus both chrono-onomastic and socio-onomastic, with chrono-onomastic referring to the analysis of the distribution of the various name forms over time, and socio-onomastic to the study of the distribution of name forms across the various social, economic and cultural strata of a population.