I know Hispanic means “from Hispania,” but what is the origin of hispania? or espana (imagine the ~ thing in there over the n, how is that done 
)? I was once told by a friend from Honduras that it came from a latin word or description the Romans gave people they saw in Iberia that meant “hairless” because the men (and probably women) had less body hair than the Romans. Is this possibly correct? :rolleyes:
There was a Greek (or possibly Phoenician) colony there named Hispalis (modern day Seville). When the Romans took over the Iberian peninsula and made it into provinces, they named them “Hispania” after the city.
For the character ñ hold down the Alt key and type in 164 on the number pad. ALT+164 creates the ñ. ALT+165 creates a capital Ñ.
There’s some speculation that it ultimately derives from some ancient word meaning “Land of rabbits.”
http://www.studyglobal.net/countryspain.htm
Can’t vouch for the accuracy, though.
Yeah, but where does “sñake hips” come from?
Yeah, I’ve read that a number of places; I believe the word was Phoenician in origin. I assume they chose it because Spain has very few rabbits.
Well, I never saw any over there. Most of it’s dry enough that I don’t think they have a lot of rabbits.
And how many Phoenicians did you run into?
I never saw any rabbits over there either, but they sure do eat lots of rabbit. Well… you can buy it in the supermarket like chicken here.
España, as noted, comes from Hispania, the Roman name for Spain, as does the English word Spain and the adjective and noun Hispanic.
Hispanic, in turn, seems to derive from the Phoenician, later Greek, colony of Hispalis, which is modern Seville (via the Moorish Ishbiliya). I couldn’t get an etymologic derivation for Hispalis, though.
Interestingly, Seville gave rise to one of the early punning rebuses (precursors of Leetish):
Oh, that’s true. They love eating rabbits. I guess you don’t see them because they ate them all.