List of Latin place names in Italy and Malta

This list includes countries and regions in the Italian Peninsula that were part of the Roman Empire, or that were given Latin place names in historical reference.

Background

Until the Modern Era, Latin was the common language for scholarship and mapmaking. During the 19th and 20th centuries, German scholars in particular made significant contributions to the study of historical place names, or "Ortsnamenkunde". These studies have, in turn, contributed to the study of genealogy. For genealogists and historians of pre-Modern Europe, knowing alternate names of places is vital to extracting information from both public and private records. Even specialists in this field point out, however, that the information can be easily taken out of context, since there is a great deal of repetition of place names throughout Europe; reliance purely on apparent connections should therefore be tempered with valid historical methodology.

Caveats and notes

Latin place names are not always exclusive to one place — for example, there were several Roman cities whose names began with "Colonia" and then a more descriptive term. During the Middle Ages, these were often shortened to just "Colonia". One of these, "Colonia Agrippinensis", retains the name today in the form of Cologne.

Early sources for Roman names show numerous variants and spellings of the Latin names.

The modern canonical name is listed first. Sources are listed chronologically. In general, only the earliest source is shown for each name, although many of the names are recorded in more than one of the sources. Where the source differs in spelling, or has other alternatives, these are listed following the source. As an aid to searching, variants are spelled completely, and listed in most likely chronology.

Superscripts indicate:
# Latinized form of the Greek-derived name.
# Latinized form of the Asian-derived name via Greek.
# Altered Latinized form of the Greek-derived name.

Cities and towns in Italy

Cities and towns on Malta

References

In order of likely publication:

*PNH: Pliny (Gaius Plinius Secundus), "Naturalis Historia"; book "PNH" chapter (that is, "37PNH81" instead of the usual "N.H.xxxvii.81").

*PG: Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus), "Geographia"; book "PG" chapter (that is, "2PG3" instead of the usual "II.3"). Ptolemy wrote in Greek, so names are transliterated back into Latin to reveal the original form.

*HLU: Johann Jacob Hofmann (1635-1706): "Lexicon Universale"

*GOL: The standard reference to Latin placenames, with their modern equivalents, is Dr. J. G. Th. Graesse, "Orbis Latinus : Lexikon lateinischer geographischer Namen des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit" (1909), an exhaustive work of meticulous German scholarship that is available on-line. To use it, one must understand German names of countries, as they were in 1909. The original was re-edited and expanded in a multi-volume edition in 1972.

See also

* Chemical elements named after places (several element names employ Latin place names)

External links

* [http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/Graesse/contents.html Graesse, Orbis Latinus]
* [http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camenaref/hofmann.html Hofmann: Lexicon Universale]
* [http://www.p.lodz.pl/I35/personal/jw37/EUROPE/europe.html Place Names of Europe]
* [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/home.html Pliny the Elder: the Natural History]
* [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/_Texts/Ptolemy/home.html Ptolemy: the Geography]