Lusitania - Origin of The Name

Origin of The Name

The etymology of the origin of the Lusitani who gave the province their name, is unclear. The name may be of Celtic origin: Lus and Tanus, "tribe of Lusus", connecting the name with the personal Celtic name Luso and with the god Lugh.

Early modern scholars derived the name from Lucis, an ancient people mentioned in Avienus' Ora Maritima and Tan, from Celtic Tan (Stan), or Tain, meaning a region or implying a country of waters, a root word that formerly meant a prince or sovereign governor of a region. The name has been connected with the personal Celtic name Luso and with the god Lugh.

Ancient Romans, such as Pliny the Elder (Natural History, 3.5) and Varro (cited by Pliny), speculated that the name Lusitania was of Roman origin, as when Pliny says lusum enim liberi patris aut lyssam cum eo bacchantium nomen dedisse lusitaniae et pana praefectum eius universae: that Lusitania takes its name from the lusus associated with Bacchus and the lyssa of his Bacchantes, and that Pan is its governor. Lusus is usually translated as "game" or "play", while lyssa is a borrowing from the Greek λυσσα, "frenzy" or "rage", and sometimes rage personified; for later poets, Lusus and Lyssa become flesh-and-blood companions of Bacchus. Luís de Camões' Os Lusíadas, which portrays Lusus as the founder of Lusitania, extends these ideas, which have no connection with modern etymology.

In his work, "Geography", the classical geographer Strabo suggests a change had occurred in the use of the name "Lusitanian". He mentions a group who had once been called "Lusitanians" living north of the Douro river but were called in his day "Callacans".