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President's Namesake an Italian 'Little Baby'

President Vladimir Putin and Italian businessman Franco Putin Unknown
Franco Putin, an Italian businessman, took new interest in his surname after a trip to Belgrade in 2000, when Serbian officials at the airport stopped him and asked whether he was related to the man who had just been elected Russia's president.

"They stared at me and were surprised by our resemblance. It took me some time to convince them that I was Italian and had nothing to do with the new president," Putin said. "They were so disappointed."

But after that trip, Putin remembered a story his father used to tell the family -- that long ago some of the Putins had left the northern Italian region of Veneto for Russia.

Out of curiosity, he asked a Parisian genealogical center to research his family name. "I was told our surname was from Veneto and that some of my relatives left Italy in the 18th century and, through France, emigrated to Russia," he said, speaking from his home in Costabissara, a small town in Veneto.

Putin, who has been doing business in Russia for more than 25 years, said he found it easy to believe he and the president were related.

"I don't need proof from genealogical centers. I'm sure that the president comes from Veneto and that we are distant relatives. We walk in the same awkward way, like ducks do, and this is our family's trademark," he said. "We even have the same beauty spot on the left cheek."

Russian genealogists, however, have traced President Vladimir Putin's family tree back to serfs living in the Tver region in the 17th century, and the Kremlin said there was nothing to the theory that he has Italian roots.

Putin is a common surname in Veneto, according to Ulderico Bernardi, a sociology professor at Ca' Foscari University in Venice, the capital of the Veneto region. About 50 Putins live in the region.

In an Italian dialect specific to Veneto, putin means "little baby." Ciao putin means "hello little baby," while Sei un putin means "You are a baby." Putina means little girl and Puta, girl.

"There is no doubt that the surname has its roots in the dialectal word 'putin.' It is characteristic of this area," Bernardi, who specializes in the local culture, said by telephone from the Veneto city of Treviso.

Franco Putin's family backs up his claim to resemble the Russian president. His brother and sister, Enrico and Maria Putin, said the Italian Putins have the same fair hair and complexion as Vladimir Putin.

"But Franco resembles him so much," Maria Putin said. "He and the other Putin share the same expressions. The eyes and the nose are the same."

Putin's daughter Chiara agrees. She said the only difference was that her father has more hair. "As for the rest, they look like brothers," she said. Her father, at 59, is seven years older than the president.

Franco Putin said he cut his hair to accentuate the likeness.

The Italian has been coming to Russia since the late 1970s to sell the brick kilns he produces. Since Vladimir Putin took office, his surname has not gone unnoticed.

"When I'm in Russia, people are pleasantly surprised by my surname and my appearance. They think that I'm a relative of the president," he said.

Photographs, though, show only a general resemblance to the president.

Franco Putin is not the first to claim that the Russian president is Italian. In 2001, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that Putin's ancestors had left northern Italy in the 18th century to serve the tsar. The paper, providing no sources, said the president's great-grandfather had fought under Peter the Great in his war against Sweden.

The newspaper said this coincided with a claim put forward in late 2000 by Moldovan genealogists that Putin was descended from a Moldovan military officer, Vlad Putine, who had become a military adviser to Peter the Great.

As proof of its theory, Moskovsky Komsomolets offered a 15th-century painting of Italian merchant Giovanni Arnolfini by the Dutch artist Jan van Eyck. In the painting, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, Arnolfini looks eerily like Vladimir Putin.

Alexander Putin, a Russian genealogist who wrote a book on the Putin surname in 2002, said any seeming evidence that Vladimir Putin had Italian roots was "mere coincidence."

"According to my research, the surname Putin comes from the old Slavonic names Putislav and Putimir," he said. Over time, the names became surnames.

Alexander Putin, who said he was the president's fourth cousin, lives in Usinsk in the Komi republic. He said the surname was found across Russia, and there was a village called Putino in the Bryansk region. During his research, he said he had also come across Putins in other countries: in the Baltic states, Finland, Germany, Italy, the United States and Canada.


For MT

The man in van Eyck's "Arnolfini Portrait" is said to resemble Vladimir Putin.

In his book "The Putin Clan," he said the president's family could be traced back to the Tver region in the 17th century. "They are not Italians," he said.

Vladimir Mogilnikov, another Russian genealogist who has researched the president's family tree, said Vladimir Putin's earliest known relative was Yakim Nikitich Putin, a serf who died before 1677. He lived in a Tver region village called Bordino, which at the time belonged to Ivan Nikitich Romanov, the uncle of the first Romanov tsar, Mikhail Romanov, and to Ivan Romanov's son, Nikita Ivanovich Romanov.

Mogilnikov, a Moscow policeman who says he has studied genealogy for 15 years, said it was unknown where Yakim Putin's ancestors had come from but it was unlikely to have been Italy. "It is a mere coincidence that you have such a surname in Italy," Mogilnikov said.

Few Italians went to Russia in the 17th and 18th centuries, Bernardi said. In the 19th century, however, many from the northern Veneto and Friuli regions went to work on the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

"They were mainly engaged in seasonal jobs, but we know that some of them decided to stay in Russia," Bernardi said.

A man who answered the phone at the Kremlin press service said there was no doubt that the president's ancestors were Russian.

Franco Putin, however, remains convinced otherwise, and other Italians who share the name also claim to see a family resemblance between themselves and the Russian president.

One resident of Veneto with the surname Putin, who was reached by telephone, claims to be the spitting image of Vladimir Putin.

"I call him Uncle Vladimir, since we look like each other," he said, asking not to be identified. "I do not need to get any publicity."

Giancarlo Putin, who lives in the small Veneto town of Santorso, says that since the president's election, he is often asked if his surname is Russian.

"At first I was surprised, since I always associated my surname with the dialectal word 'putin,' or little baby, and nothing more, but now I'm pleased about it," he said.

Giancarlo Putin said he had brown hair and eyes, and looked nothing like the president.

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