This crescent-shaped chopping knife takes its name from the Italian mezza luna, meaning half-moon. The Italian mezza—or its masculine counterpart, mezzo—are more familiar as musical terms as in mezzo soprano (a voice halfway between a soprano and a contralto) and mezza orchestra (a musical composition requiring only half the orchestra). Luna derives from the same Latin source that gave English lunar and lunatic (originally, a person made mad by the moon).