In the latter episodes of the 1960s TV series, "McHale's Navy, McHale and crew were supposedly stationed in the town of Voltafiore. I know that "fiore" is "flowers, and that "Volta" is a family name (from which we have the unit of electrical measurement)but what does "volta" actually mean? I can't find it.

It's from track and field. Originally it was pole volta.

From the OED Online:

quote:

volta, n.
Etymology: < Italian volta turn, etc., feminine past participle of volgere, volvere to turn, employed as a noun.

Volta or La Volta, is a type of dance. See Volta at Wikipedia for a number of uses of the word.

Google Translate says that volta means "time" in Italian.

Some of the meanings of volta.

It does not mean time as an abstract concept, but in the sense of an event that happened at some indeterminate time, e.g., c'era una volta means "once upon a time".

The name of the factitious town reminds me of another Italian compound: girasole 'sunflower' which is a calque on herliotrope (from Greek). Just an idea.

Since I don't differentiate between "V" and "B" very well, I had long thought that it was "Boltafiore." Bolta is cattle fodder, which, I assume, flowers at some point.

quote:

It does not mean time as an abstract concept, but in the sense of an event that happened at some indeterminate time, e.g., c'era una volta means "once upon a time".

Very interesting. I hadn't thought about it before, but there are a number of different concepts for time, aren't there?