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            Once upon a time there was a puppetta.

            What’s a puppetta?

            Definition coming.

            And what’s its name?

            Read on, dear reader, read on, and soon you will know.

            Maybe even sooner than that.

            My name is Tinocchia.

            You notice I don’t begin this true narrative, this memoir, by opening with the words, “Call me Tinocchia,” in imitation of that popular American novel about a great whale.  But if you like whales before long you will meet a great fish.

            Tinocchia has a familiar ring, doesn’t it? I’m a puppetta, that is, a girl puppet (a boy puppet, he’s a puppetto). Yes, Tinocchia is a rather strange name, I know, so un-Italian. No other girl in Italy has it, but you must agree that it has a thoroughly Italian sound.

            You see, my name is a clever Hebrew concoction thought up by my Papa. Everyone calls him Giuseppe, but I call him by his Hebrew name, Yossi.

            Yossi’s good friend, Gepetto, was also a woodworker like my Papa. Some years ago he created a puppet, actually a marionette, to whom he gave a name – well, I don’t have to tell you, for everyone, as the famous puppetto himself would cleverly say, it’s a name that everyone knose.* Soon thereafter Gepetto invited Yossi to come take a look.

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*In the original, “conaso”, a pun conflation of the two Italian words, conosce (knows) and naso (nose).

 If conaso is separated into two words – con naso – it can also mean “with nose”. My rendition, “knose”,

is but a pale attempt at recreating the anonymous author’s brilliant Italian word play.

            This inspired Papa to make a puppetto too.

            Me.

             To name me. Papa Yossi played with the Hebrew word for “baby”, tinok, and with a nod to his friend’s creation, he called me Tinocchia. Much later he would tell me many more fascinating details about my name and its links to the Hebrew alphabet, and even to the opening words of the Torah.