Ischia - Name

Name

Virgil poetically referred to it as Inarime and still later as Arime. Martianus Capella followed Virgil in this allusive name, which was never in common circulation: the Romans called it Aenaria, the Greeks, Πιθηκοῦσαι, Pithekoūsai.

(In)arime and Pithekousai both appear to derive from words for "monkey" (Etruscan arimos, Ancient Greek πίθηκος, píthēkos, "monkey"). However, Pliny derives the Greek name from the local ceramic clay deposits, not from píthēkos; he explains the Latin name Aenaria as connected to a landing by Aeneas (Princeton Encyclopedia). If the island actually was, like Gibraltar, home to a population of monkeys, they were already extinct by historical times as no record of them is mentioned in ancient sources.

The current name appears for the first time in a letter from Pope Leo III to Charlemagne in 813 (iscla from insula) though there is an argument made for a Semitic origin in I-schra, "black island".