Spain

Spain (Spanish España), that sunny country on the Iberian Peninsula whose offspring spread their culture and faith throughout most of America and to many other parts, has a long and complicated history. At the western edge of the ancient Mediterranean world, it was an important source of natural resources and warriors.

The modern name Spain derives of course from the Latin name for the Iberian peninsula, Hispania. Its course into English follows Anglo-French Espayne, which in turn derived from late Latin Spania. Hispania, however, has a disputed history, no doubt because the name is so ancient. As Spain was at one time settled by the same Phonecians who founded Carthage, its name could likely derive from a Punic source:^ʔi-spn-ya, with the first element designating a land or island, and the last meaning "region." The Semitic root is related to Hebrew saphan, meaning "hares, hydraxes." Some Romans (including Cicero and Catullus, for example) therefore took the name Hispania to be derived from a Punic source meaning "land of hares." The Punic root could also mean "north" (Hebrew sphan), or "to forge metals." Modern observers, however, tend to see these theories as perhaps a bit romantic.
Another likely theory has the word Hispania derived from the same source as Seville, Latin Hispalis. The words for the city and the country may then derive from an older Iberian word *hispa, whose meaning is lost. Still others refer to the poetic usage of Hesperia ultima, "the farthest west," from Greek Ἑσπερία, "land of the setting sun / western land." (this would ultimately would derive from Indo-European *wes-pero, which gives us also vesper "evening" in Latin, and whose reduced form is the source of English "west"). Whatever the case, a certain lack of clarity is to be expected, given the ancient history of the Iberian peninsula, which was also home to several languages still unkown to us today.

For most of its history, Spain has been more a geographial entity than a political one. Roman Hispania was divided into several provinces:

At the time of Caesar Augustus, these included Lusitania (most of modern Portugal and Extremadura), named for the Lusitani, an Indo-European tribe who may have been Celtic; Baetica (roughly modern Andalusia), named for the river Baetis (called Baits by the Phonecians), which is today the Guadalquivir, and Tarraconensis, named for Tarraco (now Tarragona), which was the capital of the province, its name perhaps coming from a Phonecian word for "citadel," tarchon. Hispania was gradually Romanized.

In the 5th century, various Germanic tribes overran the western Roman Empire, including the Suevi, and Vandals, who settled in the northwest and the south, respectively. In the next few centuries, the whole peninsula (as well as part of southern France) was united under the Visigoths, and the Visigothic Kingdom based in Toledo would be the ancestor of the medieval kingdoms of northern Spain. In their roughly 3 centuries of rule, however, the Visigoths themselves remained apart from the locals, contributing to their downfall. The Visigothic language had very little impact on embryonic Spanish.

In 711, Muslim Berbers and Arabs conquered almost the whole peninsula except for a few northern enclaves and established the Muslim domain known as al-Andalus (الأندلس), a name whose origin is disputed (see Andalusia). The Muslims had a profound effect on the local culture and left behind a wealth of place-names. Almost from the beginning, Christian kingdoms in the north, remnants of Visigothic rule, fought to regain lands lost to the Muslims: la Recoquista. In 1469, Isabella of Castile married Ferdinand of Aragon, establishing the Kingdom of Spain, making Spain a political entity rather than a geographical area. Modern Spain directly derives from this kingdom.