What's a Tintamarro?

[AlexBell]

I like Mark Twain's comments about translation, as shown in GrannyGrump's signature, and am trying to provide translations while working on The Young Cosima by Henry Handel Richardson.

In the text there is

'As for what my Tintamarro says, and so wisely...'

In the story two lovers are talking in French, and it seems that the speaker is teasing the other person.

I've no idea what Tintamarro means, and all my googling around and checking dictionaries etc hasn't helped. Can anyone point me to a translation please?

[Terisa de morgan]

I've found different meanings in Italian and Valenciá, and I've found it as nickname too.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

I've found different meanings in Italian and Valenciá, and I've found it as nickname too.

Could you tell me please what those meanings are?

[Terisa de morgan]

One of them was "loud noise" and I think the other was "great" but I'll check again later.

[Doitsu]

According to Liszt's letters to Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, Tintamarro was Liszt's nickname for Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein.
My French is rather limited, but I believe that Liszt gave her that nickname to tease her for her preference for what he considered pompous and loud music.

(Since my French isn't that great, I asked, Roger64, who is a native French speaker, to double-check this theory for me.)

[Jellby]

According to several dictionaries in Google Books, "tintamarro" means loud noise, din, racket in Provençal.

[AlexBell]

Thanks to you all. I suppose it could be used as a teasing endearment.

[roger64]

Hi

Sorry for a late answer.

First, as Tintamarro is written with a capital letter and ending with a o, it would suggest to a French reader the name of an Italian -or Spanish- person in a fiction work.

Second, the name itself stems -at least in French- from "tintamarre". A "tintamarre" is the kind of noise a drunken crowd may produce with pots and pans (and shouts)... It's something more than loud music.

This is what an average French reader could infer.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Thanks to you all. I suppose it could be used as a teasing endearment.

From the phrasing of the quoted sentence, my guess follows this line of thought. It could either be a "nickname" of someone making the sentence something like: 'As for what my excessively outspoken mother says, and so wisely...' or it could be something where an author's name is used as a stand-in for the full title of a reference book, as we commonly do when we say "look it up in your Webster's".

[AlexBell]

Thanks to you both. I'm nearly finished the ebook, and I think I'll leave it as 'a teasing endearment'.