Four is 'o puorco, the pig, and the spelling shows off one of the dialect's habits: Neapolitan splits a stressed Italian o into uo, so porco becomes puorco, morto becomes muorto. Once you have noticed it you can read half the board.
The Sicilian list agrees, u porcu at 4. Agreement is worth flagging on this grid because it is not the norm.
- 4
- 'O puorco
- the pig
- Row 1–10 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
Undocumented. There is a tempting link and it should be labelled as tempting rather than sourced: in Italian sacred art the pig is the emblem of Sant'Antonio abate, the saint Neapolitans call Sant'Antuono, and the smorfia puts a Sant'Antuono at 13. The Antonine hospitallers kept pigs, which is where the iconography comes from. Whether the board means anything by having both, no source says.
Other things filed on 4
In Neapolitan life
The pig was the household animal of poor southern Italy, fattened through the year and killed in winter, and it turns up all over the dictionary in cuts rather than as an animal: a pork chop is 4, a pig's thigh is 75.
4 in the smorfia — frequently asked
Neapolitan breaks a stressed o into uo. The same rule gives muorto for morto at 47 and viecchio for vecchio at 53.
The pig is that saint's emblem, so the two figures share an image. No published source says the board intends the connection, so it stays an observation rather than an explanation.