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I have stumbled upon different possible meanings of the construction di + article + 'cui' + noun.

One possible usage is:

La donna della cui bellezza ho sentito parlare è alta.

Is it also possible to construct another kind of double-genitive such as in: The woman, the name of whose cat is "Charlie", is tall.

La donna, il nome del cui gatto è Charlie, è alta.

John, il significato del cui nome è...

Is this construction grammatically correct? If yes, does it have a name? I can't find anything about it.

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    I’d probably rephrase as: “La Donna, il cui gatto si chiama Charlie, è alta” and “John, il cui nome significa...”
    – Hachi
    Dec 13, 2020 at 7:06
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    I am not sure it has a name per se: it's an assemblage of building blocks of Italian language. You could well use cui together with other prepositions (l'uomo al cui cospetto tremano tutti), for instance. In itself, it's not logically different from using two specifications (il nome del gatto della donna...).
    – DaG
    Dec 13, 2020 at 10:39

2 Answers 2

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I don't think it has a name per se: it's an assemblage of building blocks of Italian language. You could well use cui together with other prepositions (l'uomo al cui cospetto tremano tutti or la casa sul cui tetto c'è un'antenna), for instance.

In itself, this “double genitive” is not logically different from using two specifications, with nouns (il nome del gatto della donna...) or an adjective (il nome del suo gatto). It happens in other languages too: a quick Google Books search yields sentences such as “The annexed letter from a friend (of whose judgment I have the highest opinion)...”

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It is correct and it is called "complemento di specificazione". You can check for instance: https://dizionario.internazionale.it/parola/cui.

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