Theetymology of thename ofItaly has been the subject of reconstructions bylinguists andhistorians. Considerations extraneous to the specifically linguistic reconstruction of the name have formed a richcorpus of solutions that are either associated with legend (the existence of a king namedItalus) or in any case strongly problematic (such as the connection of the name with thegrape vine,vitis inLatin).[1]
One theory is that the name derives from the wordItalói, a term with which theancient Greeks designated a tribe ofSicels who had crossed theStrait of Messina and who inhabited the extreme tip of theItalic Peninsula, near today'sCatanzaro.[2] This is attested by the fact that the ancient Greek peoples who colonized present-dayCalabria, referred to themselves asItaliotes, that is, inhabitants of Italy.[3] This group of Italian people had worshiped the simulacrum of acalf (vitulus, in Latin), and the name would therefore mean "inhabitants of the land of calves (young bulls)".[2] In any case, it is known that in archaic times the name indicated the part located in the extreme south of the Italian Peninsula.[3]
The name of Italy originally applied only to the tip of the Italianboot.[3] As time progressed, the name "Italia" was extended further and further north until it reached the Alps in Roman times and became synonymous with the wholeItalian geographical region.[4]
The region, which is now called Italy, formerly held theOenotrians; some time their king wasItalus, and then they changed their name to Italics; succeeding Morgete, they were calledMorgetes; later came aSiculus, who divided the peoples, who were then Morgeti andSicels; and Italics were those who were Oenotrians
— Antiochus of Syracuse, inDionysius of Halicarnassus 1, 12 vg[5]
There are various legends about the character of Italus, king of the Oenotrians who, according to the myth, lived 16 generations before theTrojan War; the name "Italy" derives from him.[6] Given first to the region corresponding to his kingdom, that is almost all ofCalabria with the exception of the northern area. King Italus converted the Oenotrians from a nomadic people to a permanent one, establishing them in the extreme offshoot of the European coasts, in the current isthmus ofCatanzaro between theGulf of Squillace to the east and theGulf of Saint Euphemia to the west.[7] The capital of his kingdom, according to Strabo, wasPandosia Bruzia, today probably corresponding to the city ofAcri.
According to Strabo, Antiochus of Syracuse (5th century BC) already spoke of the borders of Italy in his workOn Italy,[8] which identified it with the ancient Oenotrians. At that time it extended from theStrait of Sicily to theGulf of Taranto (to the east) and theGulf of Posidonia (to the west).[9]
Not all ancient authors adhered to the mythological version.Marcus Terentius Varro who, citingTimaeus, derives the wordItalia from calves ("Italia a Vitulis") for the abundance and beauty of thecalf (vitulus inLatin,pronounced[ˈu̯ɪt̪ʊɫ̪ʊs];vitlu inOsco-Umbrian) in the region.[10] The passage from theVitalia form toItalia can in this case be explained by the simple fall of the initial consonant by means of classical Greek, in which the letter V is absent.[11]
Other proposals that motivate the name beyond a real linguistic analysis can be remembered that of Domenico Romanelli, who, based on the ancient but never fully accepted hypothesis that it was related to thebulls (taurus in Latin), explained it with the fact that those who came from the sea from the west saw bull-like silhouettes in theBruttia andJapigia peninsulas.[12]
In ancient times the lands of present-dayCalabria were known as Italy.[13] The ancient Greeks indicated the origin of the name inOuitoulía from the word "Italói" (plural ofItalós), a term with which theAchaeans settlers who arrived in the lands of present-day Calabria ambiguously designated the Vitulis, a population that inhabited the lands of current southern Calabria whoseethnonym was etymologically related to the word indicating the bull, an animal sacred to the Vitulis. The ancient Greekitalós is of Italic derivation from the Osco-Umbrianuitlu, precisely bull (see the Latinvitellus, form with diminutive suffix meaning calf).[13]Ouitoulía thus came to mean "land of the Vitulis" or "land of the bulls".[13] In support of this hypothesis, it is highlighted that in the southern part of the Calabrian peninsula, and in the Sicilian coast of theStrait of Messina, there are toponyms ofMagna Graecia origin (some translated into Latin by theNormans) probably belonging to the most ancient etymology of the land of the bulls (of cattle). These includeTauriana, a city destroyed by theSaracens in the 10th century whose name survives today in the municipalities ofGioia Tauro,Taurianova, andTerranova Sappo Minulio,Bova,Bovalino andItala.
The similarity with the name "Italy" of the last toponym, "Itala", is evident. Danish archaeologist and philologistFrederik Poulsen, in a study on the origin of the name "Italia", claimed that it was used for the first time in the 5th century BC, precisely with reference to the territory south ofMessina where Itala is situated and where a population of theOenotrians lived, which had a bull as its emblem ("Vitulus").[14] With the arrival of the ancient Greeks, the consonant V was eliminated from the wordVitulus, which disappeared in classical Greek, and only the word "Itulus" remained.[11]
From the Oenotrians, the populations of the Italics,Morgetes andSicels would then be distinguished. Subsequently, according to Poulsen, the name "Italy" was extended to the whole peninsula.
Catch from the Oenotrians, formerly Oenotria: now, as it is famous, having taken the name of Italus, Italy is called
— Virgil,Aeneid III, 165
Poulsen's thesis, however, seems to be questioned by the fact that the oldest documentable toponymic form for Itala is that ofGitala, as shown by a donation diploma from Count Roger of 1093. The name would then undergo many variations over the centuries:Quitala,Gitalas,Gytalas,Kitala,Hitala and finally Itala.[15]
Inancient Greek tradition the name revived the theory of expansion from south to north in that theancient Greeks would gradually apply the name "Italy" to an ever wider region, until the time of the Roman conquest, when it was extended to the entire peninsula.[3]
For some linguists who supported this theory, the name would be based on a hypothetical ancient Greek form such as Aἰθαλία (Aithalía) which in its initial part Aith- (typical of words referring to fire) would contain a reference to the volcanic dimension of the lands of the peninsula. This meaning would resist for example in the name ofEtna, in ancient Greek "Aitna". This proposal had already been advanced by Gabriele Rosa, according to whom the first ancient Greeks who arrived in the peninsula would have called it precisely:[16]
Aιθαλια (Italy) volcanic, or flaming and sooty, for the same reason that the islands ofElba (Ilva),Lemnos andChios, full of forges, said Aιθαλια
— Gabriele Rosa
Rosa, however, did not address and clarify the strictly linguistic arguments that had led him to such a solution, thus leaving his proposal in the pre-scientific dimension.[1]
It was mainly Silvestri who recovered this theory, assuming three ancient Greek orProto-Greek bases ("Aitalía", "Eitalía", and "Etalía") in order to give scientific basis to the proposal. According to this theory, Italy would originally have meant "fiery land", "land of the fiery sunset" (or "land of the West"), or "smoking land".[17]
For Felice Vinci, this solution would solve the problem of the long ilength of the wordItalia, that conflicts with the short i length of the wordvitulus, word from that thetoponym should derive according to the most credited theory. On the contrary, following the theory of the Greek origin, the long i quantity is not an exception, because it should derive from the Greekdiphthong Aι.[18]
This theory is opposed by that which, with a solution that has authoritative precedents and yet little remembered in its most recent revival, proposes anEtruscan solution of the name of Italy;[19] it is a reconstruction that deems the "Greek" hypothesis inadmissible and implies conclusions symmetrically opposed to the latter, such as the fact that the name has spread from north to south.
The ultimate etymology of the name is uncertain, in spite of numerous suggestions.[1] According to the most widely accepted explanation, LatinItalia[20] may derive fromOscanvíteliú, meaning "[land] of young cattle" (cf.Latinvitulus "calf",Umbrianvitlu), viaancient Greek transmission (evidenced in the loss of initialdigamma).[21] Thebull was a symbol of the southernItalic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during theSocial War.[22] On thecoinage of the Social War, dating back to 90 BC, found in the ancient city ofCorfinium (inAbruzzo), there is a personification of Italy as a goddess, accompanied by a legend that reproduces her name,ITALIA, in theLatin alphabet, or the equivalentVITELIU[23] (Víteliú = Italy) in the Oscan alphabet. This is the first epigraphic testimony of the use of the nameItalia.[24]
Another theory, rather contested, suggests that Italy derives from "Atalu", anAkkadian word (Semitic language likePhoenician) reconstructed by the scholarGiovanni Semerano, which would mean "land of sunset".[25]
Itamar Ben-Avi, the son of linguistEliezer Ben-Yehuda and the first modern native speaker ofHebrew, theorized that Italy derived from Hebrew — "I" ("אִי", "island"), "tal" ("טַל", "dew"), and "yam" ("יָם", "sea") — and that the name was pre-Latin and showed possible links between Etruscan and Hebrew cultures through the Mediterranean Sea.[26] Though this theory did not gain wide traction, it was also adopted by Zionist leaderZe'ev Jabotinsky.[27]
It can be observed that the notion of Italy is a dynamic and plural notion, in progress until the 3rd century BC. In fact, in the conception of Italy aGreek Italy (limited to the southern Italy), anotherEtruscan (separated from theApennines, from theGallic and ancient Greek world), and probably also a firstRoman Italy, which initially coincided with the large western coastal region between northernEtruria and theager Campanus, and which then absorbed the others.[28]
Italia, the ancient name of theItalian Peninsula, which is also eponymous of themodern republic, originally applied only to the "tip" of the Italian "boot" (in modernCalabria).[3]
According toAntiochus of Syracuse, it included only the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula:[29][30][31][32] the actualprovince of Reggio Calabria and part of the modernprovinces of Catanzaro andVibo Valentia. The town of Catanzaro has a road sign (in Italian) also stating this fact.[33] But by this time,Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous and the name also applied to most ofLucania as well. Coins bearing the nameVíteliú inOscan (𐌅𐌝𐌕𐌄𐌋𐌉𐌞) were minted by an alliance ofItalic peoples (Sabines,Samnites,Umbrians and others) competing with Rome in the 1st century BC.[3]
The ancientGreeks gradually came to apply the nameItalia to a larger region, but it was during theRoman Republic, in 264 BC, that the territory called "Italy" was extended to theItalian Peninsula south of theArno andRubicon rivers. The northern area ofCisalpine Gaul came in the Roman sphere of influence in the 220s BC and became considered geographically andde facto part of Italy.[34] The borders ofRoman Italy,Italia, are better established. Cato'sOrigines, the first work ofhistory composed inLatin, described Italy as the entire peninsula south of theAlps.[35] According to Cato and several Roman authors, the Alps formed the "walls of Italy".[36] The north, however, being a province, remainedde jure separated from Italy in administrative matters for a longer period of time. It was legally merged into the administrative unit of Italy in 42 BC by the triumvirAugustus, as planned byJulius Caesar, who had already extended Roman citizenship to all of Cisalpine Gaul in 49 BC.[37] The term "Italy" also included Liguria up to theVaro river and Istria up toPola and to theArsa river.[9] All its inhabitants were consideredItalic andRoman.[9][38][39][40][41][42]
Under EmperorDiocletian the administrative Roman region of "Italia" was further enlarged with the addition in 292 AD of the three big islands of the westernMediterranean Sea:Sicily (with theMaltese archipelago),Sardinia andCorsica, coinciding with the wholeItalian geographical region.[4]
Indeed, under Diocletian Italy became the 'Dioecesis Italiciana. It also included southernRaetia (actualSwitzerland and parts ofAustria). It was subdivided into the following provinces:
Constantine subdivided the Empire into fourpraetorian prefectures. TheDiocesis Italiciana became thePraetorian prefecture of Italy (praefectura praetoria Italiae), and was subdivided into two dioceses. It still includedRaetia. The two dioceses and their provinces were:
The Latin termItalicus was used to describe "a man of Italy" as opposed to aprovincial. For example,Pliny the Elder notably wrote in a letterItalicus es an provincialis? meaning "are you an Italian or a provincial?".[44]The adjectiveitalianus, from which are derived the Italian (and also French and English) name of theItalians, ismedieval and was used alternatively with Italicus during theearly modern period.[45]
After thefall of the Western Roman Empire, which was caused by the invasion of theOstrogoths, theKingdom of Italy was created. After theLombard invasions, "Italia" was retained as the name fortheir kingdom, and for itssuccessor kingdom within theHoly Roman Empire, which nominally lasted until 1806, although it hadde facto disintegrated due tofactional politics pitting the empire against the ascendantcity republics in the 13th century.[46]
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