Bernardetta

Bernardetta is an Italian feminine diminutive form of Bernardo, which derives from the Old High German name Bernhard, composed of the elements bern, meaning bear, and hard, meaning brave or strong. The name thus carries the sense of bold as a bear or strong as a bear. It is the Italian equivalent of the French Bernadette, famously associated with Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, the nineteenth-century visionary whose visions of the Virgin Mary made the name widely known across the Catholic world. Related forms include Bernadette, Bernadetta, and the masculine Bernardo and Bernard.