I have read that Fascist Italy brought back Latin as a national language in fascist Italy. Were there any calls from specific people or groups to replace Italian with Latin completely?
Not going to lie, this is the first time I've heard this.
Although Latin was the 'learned' language taught in the liceo-type high schools and there being a heavy adoption of Roman myths in the regime's own mythology, I've never come across any attempt to make Latin the national language of Italy during the regime. If anything, the regime went on an extremely aggressive and violent, at least in the case of ethnic minorities, process of Italianisation.
Arguably, Italian was barely a national language during the fascist regime and much has been written and discussed about just how much impact the introduction of television had in making Italian the national language of Italy. In any case, the regime went through a very thorough process of Italianisation which had a very deep impact in Italian society and culture which is still felt today.
In terms of the language itself, in a push to promote Italian national pride, there was a cultural push to replace a number of foreign loanwords and replace them with an Italian equivalent.
Some examples of this are:
It has to be said that some of these words existed in Italian prior to the fascist regime but had largely been supplanted by the foreign loanword. The regime often simply tried to reintroduce the Italian word into common language and in some respects it was extremely successful in doing so. Using a couple of examples above, although not as common as it may have been even 20 years ago, you sometimes still hear older Italian people refer to whiskey as acquavite. Or as slightly different example, although the sport is referred to box (and that in itself is interesting as the French spelling was preferred for a long time), the most used word for a boxer is actually still pugile. The terms basket and pallacanestro are today used interchangeably. And probably the most successful of the examples above, the most common word for a sandwich even amongst younger generations is tramezzino; the word sandwich has re-entered common usage but that is arguably the result of the popularisation of fastfood chains in the 80s and the cultural impact of the subculture of the paninari.
As mentioned, Italianisation was particularly aggressive and even violent when it came to ethnic minorities. This particualarly affected minorities in South Tyrol, the Julian March and Dalmatia. Besides the suppression of non-Italian language newspapers, prohibiting the teaching of non-Italian language in schools and banning any non-Italian cultural expression, there was a deep impact on both people and place names.
In terms of surnames this was mostly a change that affected Slovene and Croat speaking people in the Julian March and Trieste areas. Fascist law obliged people with a foreign name to register to authorities with an Italianised name. This was largely undone by the republican constitution which re-introduce bilingualism and gave certain regions and provinces special status in view of the large presence of ethnic minorities.
In terms of geography, the process affected mostly South Tyrol which is known as Alto Adige in Italian. Here a number of German toponyms were substituted with Italian names such as Sterzing being known as Vipiteno. Again, some of these names referred to previous Italian names for the location which were referred with their German name. In a way, this is similar to what Nazi German did with a number of Polish cities and towns where it reintroduced the German name. The effect of a number of places in Alto Adige being referred by their Italian name rather than their German name is something that has continued to this day. Although now places are referred by either name, the tendency is for German speakers to refer to the place with their German name and Italian speakers to refer to it with the Italian name. For example, the city of Bolzano is officially known by both the Italian name and the German Bozen; however, Italian language media and speakers will still refer to the city as Bolzano and German language media and speakers will refer to the city as Bozen instead. Although the example of Alto Adige is a very interesting one as the bilingual nomenclature remains whereas in French speaking areas in north-western Italy towns completely abandoned the Italianised name and are solely known by their French name even by Italian media and speakers; for example the town of Curmayeur, on the opposite side of the border from Chamonix, was renamed Cormaiore but that name has completely disappeared and the town is still commonly referred to as Curmayeur.