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[German version] The language of an inscription (12 lines) on a stele which was discovered around the turn of the 19th/20th cents. near Novilara, 6 km south of Pesaro. It consists of about 40 word elements written in an alphabet very similar to the Etruscan script. Yet as in the Southern Picene script the alphabet has preserved the Greek signs for b, d, g und o and adds a third back vowel that is represented by means of u with a diacritic dash. It is thought that we can recognize some Greek loanwords: isperion - ἑσπέριον/ hespérion, polem - πόλιν/ pólin, soter, sotris - σωτήρ/ sōtḗr, vilatos - εὐίλ…

[German version] Language of the Ligures (Greek Λίγυες; Lígyes) who are regarded by ancient authors as the original population of the northern Mediterranean coast between the Pyrenees and Etruria. The name Liguria, which refers to the furthest south-west of upper Italy, provides a definite link with the name of the people. We know next to nothing about the pre-Roman language of this region, and there are no extant texts; typical of personal names on Latin inscriptions, which are attested only in Liguria, are the suffixes -anius and -elius; the same area is perhaps the core territo…

[German version] The language of the upper Italian Veneti [1] is known through 270 inscriptions written between the 5th and the 1st cents. BC. The most important sites are Este (more than 120 inscr.), Padua (23), and Lágole di Cadore (Calalzo) in the upper Piave valley (66); individual finds reach all the way to Vicenza in the west, in the north into the Gail valley and in the east to the Isonzo in Slovenia (see map). A small number of the most recent texts is written in Latin script, all others in the Venetic alphabet, which had been redesigned from an Etruscan alphabe…

Forssman, Bernhard (Erlangen) Untermann, Jürgen (Pulheim/Köln) [German version] A. General Remarks (CT) Onomastics (the study of names) is the linguistic discipline for the investigation of names. In their most common form, names (proper names, onómata in Greek) are a subclass of nouns, which every language in the world uses to designate individuals as opposed to the classes to which they belong: Φίλιππος in Φίλιππος βασιλεύς, Garganus in Garganus mons, Ebro in río Ebro. Individuals from numerous classes of concrete or fictitious categoriesn can be named: divinities…

[German version] Pre-Roman language of the Daunians ( Daunia), Peucetians ( Peucetii), Iapygians ( Iapyges) and Sal(l)entini in the territory of modern Apulia, the ancient regions of Apulia and Calabria. It is recorded in 600 mostly very short inscriptions and a few glosses; according to modern convention named after the people of the Messapii who were listed in Antiquity without clear demarcation together with the Sallentinians and Iapyges. The inscriptions have been dated to the period from abou…

[German version] is the name given to the language of a group of some 100 short inscriptions, almost all on small horn or bronze votive objects, written in variants of the northern Etruscan alphabet, and found on both sides of the Adige and Isarco rivers between Brenner and Verona  [1]. The list of personal names is augmented by names found in Latin inscriptions, in an area including the surroundings of Brescia and the Oglio valley. The theory that the language is closely related to Etruscan - as …

[German version] Language of a pre-Greek population in eastern Sicily, known from some 100 glosses recorded by ancient authors as Siculan, and from an only imprecisely delimitable number of inscriptions, mostly from the 6th and 5th centuries BC, written in a somewhat modified Greek alphabet. The four most important inscriptions are: a jug (guttus) from Centuripe (almost 100 letters), a stela from Sciri near Caltagirone, a block of stone from Mendolito (over 50 letters each), a vase from Montagna d…

[German version] Some sparse indication of the language of the Elymians ( Elymi) can be gleaned from the legends of coins from Eryx and Segesta (5th cent. BC) as well as the about 300 mainly short graffiti on pottery from Segesta known only since 1960 (8th-6th cents.): it probably was an Indo-European Italic dialect, possibly similar to those of the Siculans. Older attempts to establish a similarity with the ‘Ligurian’ or ‘Illyrian’ languages or a non Indo-European origin, have been shown to be untenable.  Italy: Languages;  Sicel (Siculan) Untermann, Jürgen (Pulheim/Köln) Bibliograp…

I. Geography and history [German version] A. Name Since the 1st cent. AD, H. has referred more and more to the entire Iberian Peninsula. Although the name Hispania is only attested since the time of the 2nd Punic War (218-201 BC; Liv. 21,2; Enn. Ann. 503), it is the oldest of all, because it is derived from Phoenician í-shephanním, ‘rabbit coast’ (according to a new interpretation ‘land of metal plates’). A further name was Ophioussa (‘land of the snakes’; Avien. 148; 152; 172; 196), which was probably coined by the Phocaeans when they came into contact with some reg…