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The true origins of the name España and its cognates “Spain” and “Spanish” are disputed. The ancient Roman name for Iberia, Hispania, may derive from poetic use of the term Hesperia to refer to Spain, reflecting Greek perception of Italy as a “western land” or “land of the setting sun” (Hesperia) and Spain, being still further west, as Hesperia ultima. It may also be a derivation of the Punic Ispanihad meaning “land of rabbits” or “edge”, a reference to Spain’s location at the end of the Mediterranean; Roman coins struck in the region from the reign of Hadrian show a female figure with a rabbit at her feet. There are also claims that España derives from the Basque word Ezpanna meaning “edge” or “border”, another reference to the country being at the extreme southwest of the European continent.
The humanist Antonio de Nebrija proposed that the word Hispania evolved from the Iberian word Hispalis, meaning “city of the western world”. According to a new research by Jesús Luis Cunchillos published in 2000 with the name of Gramática fenicia elemental (Basic phoenician grammar), the root of the term span is spy, meaning “to forge metals”. Therefore i-spn-ya would mean “the land where metals are forged”.
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