[phikappa]

Interesting case of double-layered false nominative determinism. Although foresta in Italian means "forest" and thus the surname would seem eminently plant-based, it actually means "foreigner", which I guess he also ended up being as Italian immigrant in the US. The etymology of forest and foreigner is closely related and means basically just "(from the) outside".

[rob74]

Wow, that's a really sneaky "false friend" in Italian! Especially since it even has the meaning of "forest-related" in other Latinic languages, e.g. in French route forestière = forest road.

[phikappa]

I wouldn't call it so much a false friend as forest/foreign (and forfeit and I'm sure a bunch of other words) all coming from the same Latin "foris" root and being semantically related.

In Italian, outside is just "fuori".

You're a foreigner to what you've forfeited in the forest.

[bonzini]

Forest-related is "forestale" in Italian.

[world2vec]

In Portuguese "forasteiro" can also be used to mean "foreigner" or "outsider".