Hispania - Origin of the Name - Encyclopedia II

The term Hispania is Latin and the term Iberia Greek. Surviving Roman texts always use "Hispania" (first mentioned 200 BC by the poet Quintus Ennius) while Greek texts always employ "Iberia."

To substitute Spanish for Iberian or for Hispanicus is anachronistic and misleading, since Iberia and Hispania refer not just to modern Spain but to the whole peninsula; Hispania can also rarely include the western part of Roman Mauretania in what is now Morocco and the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla.

The origin of the word Hispania appears to be Punic. The etymologist Eric Partridge (Origins) finds it in the pre-Roman name for Seville, Hispalis, which strongly hints of an ancient name for the country of *Hispa, an Iberian or Celtic root whose meaning is now lost[1].

The Catholic Encyclopedia reports, "Some derive it from the Punic word tsepan, 'rabbit,' basing the opinion on the evidence of a coin of Galba, on which Hispania is represented with a rabbit at her feet, and on Strabo, who calls Spain 'the land of rabbits'" [2]. Others attribute a Punic connotation of "dark", "hidden", "lost", or "remote."

One version states that the name comes from the Phoenician word I-shphanim, which means literally "from or about hyraxes" (shphanim is plural for shaphán, Hyrax syriacus). Lacking a better term, the Phoenicians used that word for rabbits, an unknown animal for them but very common in the peninsula. Another interpretation of the same term would be Hi-shphanim, "Rabbits' Island" (or "Hyraxes' Island").

None of these etymologies is truly satisfactory.

Rabbits weren't the only animal that stood out as proverbially abundant there. Greeks called Cape St. Vincent, and by extension all of western Iberia, Ophioússa, which means "land of snakes," a designation that they also applied to numerous Mediterranean islands. The change to "Iberia" came because iber was a word heard among the peninsula's inhabitants. This geographic term cannot have been specific to the Ebro river, because this word was also heard throughout what is now Andalusia or southern Spain. Some modern linguists think that it meant simply river, but there is no consensus regarding this issue.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origin of the Name", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page