Italy\'s Ancient Name

[Doc]

What did the Romans call Italy in ancient times? Did they call the peninsula Etruria?

[Lupianus]

Thought it was simply Italia. Perhaps they used names for different landscapes and tribal areas, but the overall name for the "Italian boot" was that (at least from the 3rdc BC onwards).
However, the "bootleg" beyond the Po river counted as Gallia (Cisalpina) and the Southern edge of Messana and Sicily was called Sicilia. Both had provincial status (Cisalpina up to 41BC), so the Romans needed to differentiate.

[Quintus Galerius]

Italy was called Italia by Romans and Greek, while the Oscan name was maybe Viteliù, then it was divided into a lot of regiones such as campania, samnium, daunia, peucetia, messapia, enotria, bruttium etc etc

[Doc]

Thank you both for the clarification

[Quintus Galerius]

Etruria was the land of Tirreni or Etruschi or Tyrsenoi or Rasenna (in their own language) and it starts in the middle-north of Italy with the Arno river and end in the middle-south with the Tevere (maybe called Volturnum from Etruschi)

Italy was also called Hesperia from Greek because in greek "he hespèra" was the sunset and Italy is placed in the west of Greece, so the land where the sun dies.
It eas called even Ausonia in some poetic composition, maybe Virgilio but I'm note sure... (look that all these names has been given first to the south of Italy by the Greeks of the Magnia Grecia and then to the whole country)

[Tiberius Clodius Corvinus]

Italy was called Italia by Romans and Greek, while the Oscan name was maybe Viteliù, [...]

Is there a connection to the name of the gens Vitellius, indicating an oscan/samnite origin of the family?

[Antonius Lupus]

Two articles from the Wiki:

From Latin Ītalia, itself from Greek Ἰταλία, from the ethnic name Ἰταλός, plural Ἰταλοί, originally referring to an early population in the southern part of Calabria. That ethnic name probably directly relates to a word ἰταλός (italós, "bull"), quoted in an ancient Greek gloss by Hesychius (from his collection of 51,000 unusual, obscure and foreign words). This "Greek" word is assumed to be a cognate of Latin vitulus ("calf"), although the different length of the i is a problem. Latin vitulus ("calf") is presumably derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *wet- meaning "year" (hence, a "yearling": a "one-year-old calf"), although the change of e to i is unexplained. The "Greek" word, however, is glossed as "bull", not "calf". Speakers of ancient Oscan called Italy Víteliú, a cognate of Greek Ἰταλία and Latin Ītalia. Varro wrote that the region got its name from the excellence and abundance of its cattle. Some disagree with that etymology. Compare Italus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... tymologies


The origin of the term Italy (It: Italia), from Latin Italia,[5] is uncertain. According to one of the more common explanations, the term was borrowed through Greek, from Oscan Víteliú, meaning "land of young cattle" (cf. Lat vitulus "calf", Umb vitlo "calf") and named for the god of cattle, Mars.[6] The bull was a symbol of the southern Italian tribes and is often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Samnite Wars.

The name Italia applied to a part of what is now southern Italy. According to Antiochus of Syracuse, it originally only referred to the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula (modern Calabria), but by his time Oenotrians and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name "Italia" to a larger region, but it was not until the time of the Roman conquests that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy#Etymology

[Quintus Galerius]

Nescio, I found in my town some monuments of I d.C. (or A.D. as you say) of the gens Ovia , maybe ancient oscan/samnite gentes during the roman domination used to use their ancient names to show their roots, I'm doing some researches about this subject but now I know nothing about Vitellius (I can tell you that Viteliù has some links with the animal "vitello", on some osco/samnite coins there's a "vitello", maybe they can have the same roots referred to the animal)

[Quintus Galerius]

PS Vitellius born in Nuceria Alfaterna, a city owned in the past by Alfaterni, an oscan tribe...

[Tiberius Clodius Corvinus]

thanks much for your reply, Francesco.