Everyone is familiar with the typical Italian cylinder-shaped sweet bread with a cupola top called panettone. It's made with raisins and candied fruits, prepared for Christmas every year, and even if there are many versions of how it came to be, all the legends and popular tales agree on its birthplace being Milan, in the North of Italy.

 

Many Italian words ending in "-one" are augmentative words - "-one" being an augmentative suffix, indeed. So is panettone, which derives from panetto, a small loaf cake, which in its turn derives from pane, that is bread (or loaf), being formed with the diminutive suffix "-etto".

 

Pane —> loaf

Pan-etto —> small loaf cake

Panett-one —> big loaf cake

 

Despite this grammatical explanation, there are other etymological versions you may encounter regarding the origin of the name panettone. For example, according to a popular legend, panettone cake was invented by a scullery boy named Toni, who worked at the court of Ludovico Il Moro (Ludovico Sforza, byname The Moor), the duke of Milan, at the end of 15th century. When the official chef failed to produce a cake for the Christmas banquet, Toni saved the night by presenting the guests a sweet loaf he had made out of left-overs. That's why panettone got its name: it was the loaf of Toni —> pan de Toni.

 

In Italy it is common practice to bring a panettone cake to someone you're visiting during the Christmas and holiday season. It is either that or a pandoro, another sweet cake you eat only over Christmas time.