Doge

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For other uses, see Doge (disambiguation).

The word doge (plural "dogi" or "doges") is a dialectical Italian word (in standard Italian it became duce) that comes from Latin dux, meaning leader, especially military, and giving rise to the noble or princely title duke in English. Specifically, the title was used for the elected chief of state in a few Italian "crowned republics". The two best known such republics rivaled each other and the other regional great powers by building their historical city-states into maritime, commercial, and, to a lesser extent, territorial mini-empires: Venice and Genoa (Genova).

Another, virtually insignificant, but still styled "most serene republic", was the minute Senarica, named after its capital west of Teramo (in Abruzzo) on Central Italy's Adriatic coast, which also elected dogi, possibly annually, from 1343 till its annexation to the Neapolitan kingdom of Sicily in 1797.