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Hi, I'm italian and I studied it at university.

Italian nowadays doesn't have circumflex, but it could be used in the case of a plural word ending with "o". For example " dominî " is the plural of "dominio", so it should be "dominii". But in italian a vowel can't be repeated, so the double " ii " become " î ".

Other example are:

- Principio ---> principii (uncorrect) ---> principî ---> principi.

In this case the circumflex would be necessary in order to dinstinguish "principi", that in the singular form could be either "PRINCIPIO" (principle) or "PRINCIPE" (prince).

I don't know in which book you have found it, but it's very very rare and optional using the "^", also in formal contexts. I know it just because I studied it, but it is not even taught at school... nobody uses it.

In Italian we don't use circumflex, it's really rare that we use it.

In the past, circumflex could be used on each vocal (â, ê, î, ô, û) and characterized poetic speech and ancient language .

Poets sometimes put circumflexes where words were too long or when ruined the poem's metric.

For example --> fûro (furono), fêro (fecero), amâro (amarono), tôrre (togliere), côrre (cogliere), finîro (finirono).

Today circumflex could be used only to abbreviate two same vocal at the end of a word.

In fact many words that at singular finish for "-io" and at plural become "-ii" (ex. addio → addii (or addî).

The word that you have found, "domini" could be also a Latin word (dominium) that means "property, ownership". Dominii (with "ii") is genitive singular and means "of the property". Instead, Domini means "of the lord" or "lords".

Bye!

No, such accent is not used in the italian language