Bolzano's provincial government on Tuesday passed a law to keep the name of the surrounding region as Alto Adige after a recent row over its supposed replacement by the term South Tyrol.
The government approved an ad hoc bill to change article one of the European law and replace 'province of Bolzano' with 'Alto Adige'.
The German text of a recent version of the law only cited South Tyrol and not the Italian equivalent, Alto Adige, sparking a row.
But Governor Arno Kompatscher described the alleged name change as "fake news".
He said it would have been impossible to change the name from Alto Adige to South Tyrol only because this would have meant breaching the Italian Constitution.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol is an autonomous region in Northern Italy, on the Austrian border.
Since the 1970s, most legislative and administrative powers have been transferred to the two self-governing provinces that make up the region: the Province of Trento, commonly known as Trentino, and the Province of Bolzano, commonly known as South Tyrol.
From the 9th century until its annexation by Italy in 1919, the region was part of Austria-Hungary and its predecessors, the Austrian Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. Together with the Austrian state of Tyrol it is represented by the Euroregion Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino. With a past of poverty, the region is today among the wealthiest and most developed in both Italy and the whole European Union.
In English, the region is also known as Trentino-South Tyrol or by its Italian name, Alto Adige.
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