First they called him Antonio Cesaro, now just Cesaro, what's going on? Well, actually, his real name is Claudio Castagnoli. WWE termed him Antonio Cesaro because they like to own their trademarks. The Antonio portion of the name was later dropped because Vince McMahon felt it sounded too girly. He is now known simply as Cesaro, which in some ways is a good thing, the 'Antonio' drop showed that WWE cares how the star is getting perceived. Using his birth name, Claudio Castagnoli, he was a well known indie name, which is another reason WWE perhaps chose to call him Antonio Cesaro - the company doesn't like people to have an identity pre-WWE. The name Claudio Castagnoli tells us that even though he is Swiss, he perhaps has a greater italian heritage. The Swiss Alps fall into Northern Italy, thus it isn't that unusual for Swiss people to have Italian sounding names. Switzerland of course borders several countries, which perhaps explains how Claudio has become fluent in 5 languages (English, German, French, Italian, and his native region dialect).
