The word ‘Hispania’ has its origin in the denomination that the Roman civilization used for the whole of the Iberian Peninsula and whose meaning was linked by Latin writers to the ‘land of rabbits’. Among them Pliny the Elder, Cato the Elder and Catullus, who cited the Iberian lands as a place full of rabbits, more specifically hyraxes (mammals similar to rabbits and widespread in Africa). In fact, in some representations and coins minted in ‘Hispania’ a lady usually appears with a rabbit at her feet.
Not surprisingly, its non-Latin root warned historians that it would surely the word ‘Hispanic’ It comes from the Phoenician ‘I-span-ya’. A civilization –the Phoenician– heir to many of the Greek Mediterranean colonies, which was already strongly established in the Iberian Peninsula around the 5th century BC. Later the Phoenician colonies came to be controlled by carthage.
Although sources have never been found to explain whether the Phoenicians called the entire Iberian Peninsula ‘I-span-ya’ or what the exact meaning of this word was, different theories have been developed through philological studies. As stated Candido Maria Trigueros in 1767, the term could mean the ‘land of the north’, arguing that the Phoenicians had discovered the coast of ‘Hispania’ skirting the African coast, and this was to the north. In such a way that ‘spn’ (sphan in Hebrew and Aramaic) would mean ‘the north’ in Phoenician.
Detail of the columns on an ancient map, the Tabula Peutingeriana.
But the currently most accepted theory suggests that ‘I-span-ya’ translates as land where metals are forged, since ‘spy’ in Phoenician (root word ‘span’) means to beat metals. Behind this newly created hypothesis lies Jesus Luis Cunchillos y Jose Angel Zamoraexperts in Semitic philology from the CSIC, who carried out a comparative philological study between various Semitic languages and determined that the name originates from the fame of the gold mines of the Iberian Peninsula.
However, in addition to the current of studies that has argued the Phoenician origin of ‘Hispania’, there have been theories of all kinds and conditions. From the beginning of the Modern Age until 1927, the belief was defended that ‘Hispania’ is a deformation of Hispalis, a word of Iberian origin that would mean the western city, and that, since Hispalis was the main city of the peninsula, the Phoenicians and , later, the Romans gave their name to all their territory.
Initially, the Greeks designated the current lands that inhabit Spain and Portugal as the ‘Ophioussa Peninsula’that means ‘land of snakes’. Although the Romans believed that ‘Hispania’ was a land inhabited by rabbits, the Greeks thought it was abundant with this type of reptile. Over the years, the Greeks ended up designating the peninsula as Iberia, since ‘iber’ was a word that was constantly heard among the inhabitants of the peninsula.