The name of the bank and the eponymous bridge (Bank of the Virtuous Woman), seems to origin from two different folk tales.
The first story tells of a swordsmith who worked here and had a beautiful wife with whom a patrician had fallen in love. The patrician then, to approach the woman, commissioned a dagger (a Mercy as they called it at the time) to the swordsmith. However, when the woman would not hear of his advances, he abused her. The woman, unable to bear the burden of what happened, killed herself with the dagger her rapist had commisioned to her husband.

The second story, a little more light-hearted, tells about two friends crossing the bridge: the first asking to the another an opinion about the honesty of women, got as reply that the only honest woman was the one depicted on the stone wall of a house next to the bridge.