Italia, etymology - ITALY (name)
Created | Updated Sep 22, 2010
Italia (in this entry) refers to the name of the Italian peninsula and to the state officially denominated Repubblica italiana, in English: Italian Republic. The entry itself deals with the etymology of the word.
The origin of the Italian term "Italia” is uncertain. It is adopted in the current language from the Latin: “Italia”, without changes.
The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy, more precisely to the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula (modern Calabria) by his time known as Oenotria (Enotria – “land of wine”). Soon Enotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the last name stuck; the Greeks gradually came to apply the name "Italia" to a larger and larger region as their trade routes expanded, but it was not until the time of the Roman conquests that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula.
In ancient times the name Italy was linked to a mythological eponymous hero: Italo, whose vicissitudes can be traced to the late Iron Age according to several legends about this character supposed to have lived 16 generations before the Trojan War, as reported by Thucydides: "this region was called Italy by Italo, Arcadian King".
Aristotle (Politics, VII, 9, 2 - and again: Politics, VII, 10, 2-3) recounts that "He became a king of Enotria, from which it would be called, renamed, Italy instead of Enotria”
According to one of the more common explanations, the term was borrowed by the Romans through Greek use of the Oscan Víteliú, meaning "land of young cattle" ("vitello" is still used in Italian both in the meaning of "calf" - the animal - and "veal", the meat. Lat vitulus "calf", Umbrian: vitlo "calf").
Another recent theory, rather challenged, suggesting that Italy comes from "Atalu", an Akkadian (a Semitic language similar to Phoenician) word, has been put forward by the scholar Giovanni Semerano which means "land of the sunset."
Again there is the idea that the name is based on a Greek form (not attested and therefore hypothetical) as *(Aithalìa) in its initial part Aith-(typical of words related to fire) would contain a reference to the size volcanic land on the peninsula. This meaning would resist such in the name of Etna, in ancient Greek "Aitna".
Other ideas as being originated from a group of African immigrant seems to be without any grounding: in the ancient times only Phoenicians and Greeks were able to sail the Mediterranean.
In the humble opinion of he writer the Oscan> Greek> Latin seems to be the most probable. This consideration is based on the fact that the bull was a symbol very popular with those people of the peninsula, the centre-south, opposed the advance of Roman culture, so that they often eloquently depicted on Italic coins a bull, a symbol of the southern Italian tribes often depicted - the bull - goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Samnite Wars (343-282 BCE).
With great probability after the end of the Samnite Wars Rome decide to adopt - in a very Freudian way - the symbol of the defeated enemy.
The origin of the Italian term "Italia” is uncertain. It is adopted in the current language from the Latin: “Italia”, without changes.
The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy, more precisely to the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula (modern Calabria) by his time known as Oenotria (Enotria – “land of wine”). Soon Enotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the last name stuck; the Greeks gradually came to apply the name "Italia" to a larger and larger region as their trade routes expanded, but it was not until the time of the Roman conquests that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula.
In ancient times the name Italy was linked to a mythological eponymous hero: Italo, whose vicissitudes can be traced to the late Iron Age according to several legends about this character supposed to have lived 16 generations before the Trojan War, as reported by Thucydides: "this region was called Italy by Italo, Arcadian King".
Aristotle (Politics, VII, 9, 2 - and again: Politics, VII, 10, 2-3) recounts that "He became a king of Enotria, from which it would be called, renamed, Italy instead of Enotria”
According to one of the more common explanations, the term was borrowed by the Romans through Greek use of the Oscan Víteliú, meaning "land of young cattle" ("vitello" is still used in Italian both in the meaning of "calf" - the animal - and "veal", the meat. Lat vitulus "calf", Umbrian: vitlo "calf").
Another recent theory, rather challenged, suggesting that Italy comes from "Atalu", an Akkadian (a Semitic language similar to Phoenician) word, has been put forward by the scholar Giovanni Semerano which means "land of the sunset."
Again there is the idea that the name is based on a Greek form (not attested and therefore hypothetical) as *(Aithalìa) in its initial part Aith-(typical of words related to fire) would contain a reference to the size volcanic land on the peninsula. This meaning would resist such in the name of Etna, in ancient Greek "Aitna".
Other ideas as being originated from a group of African immigrant seems to be without any grounding: in the ancient times only Phoenicians and Greeks were able to sail the Mediterranean.
In the humble opinion of he writer the Oscan> Greek> Latin seems to be the most probable. This consideration is based on the fact that the bull was a symbol very popular with those people of the peninsula, the centre-south, opposed the advance of Roman culture, so that they often eloquently depicted on Italic coins a bull, a symbol of the southern Italian tribes often depicted - the bull - goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Samnite Wars (343-282 BCE).
With great probability after the end of the Samnite Wars Rome decide to adopt - in a very Freudian way - the symbol of the defeated enemy.
