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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

> It’s amazing to imagine how much of human history was never preserved

period instruments in this case made me fear that the orphans were future castrati, but thankfully that piece of history was not preserved. Turns out this was an orphanage for girls, putte, who were in fact trained to sing, and they are depicted in the painting. (the term putto, boy", was used to refer to male cherubs)

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I think I read about these orphanages, which mainly took in children from prostitutes after they got pregnant, in that book "Range: generealists are better" or whatever it was called. I'm not sure if its the same ones mentioned in the book. They trained the orphans in a wide variety of musical instruments to perform for patrons or at events, it was their main source of income for the orphanage, and the orphans were in fact very skilled. A lot of the baroque period musicians wrote music to be performed by them.

> (the term putto, boy", was used to refer to male cherubs)

I grew up in a Latino neighborhood, and there’s a word pronounced like that that definitely didn’t mean cherub

In Italian a double T is pronounced as two Ts so it would sound different. Of course it may sound homophonous to many.

I do in fact know that. I still wouldn’t risk it in my old hood.

The extra t is the kicker there. I might just have to start using cherub.

I’m not an expert but I could definitely see an entomological connection between putto in Italian meaning castrated orphan if what the above poster says is true and puto in Spanish which is often a slur against gay men.

Well, puto in Spanish is the male form of puta, meaning hooker. There might still be an etymological connection with putto in Italian, but more likely via "putta" also meaning prostitute in Latin (putana in Italian).

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