The paper aims to explain the origin of two old Italian words of Turkish origin, cassasso ‘a Turkish police officer’ and pettomagi/pettomanzi ‘Turkish officer(s) dealing with the possesions of the dead’. Contrary to a previous etymology of his, the author’s present opinion is that cassasso derives from the Ottoman-Turkish hasas, a spoken variant of the literary Arabism ‘ases ‘a guard, night-watchman, policeman’. As to pettomagi/pettomanzi, it is possibly a Turkish adaptation of Greek words as πεϑ αμός ‘death’, πεϑ αμένος ‘dead’ + nominal suffix -cI.

The paper aims to explain the origin of two old Italian words of Turkish origin, cassasso ‘a Turkish police officer’ and pettomagi/pettomanzi ‘Turkish officer(s) dealing with the possesions of the dead’. Contrary to a previous etymology of his, the author’s present opinion is that cassasso derives from the Ottoman-Turkish hasas, a spoken variant of the literary Arabism ‘ases ‘a guard, night-watchman, policeman’. As to pettomagi/pettomanzi, it is possibly a Turkish adaptation of Greek words as πεϑ αμός ‘death’, πεϑ αμένος ‘dead’ + nominal suffix -cI.