Toponymy
The first toponym known is Ad Turres, which appears in the Vascula Apollinaria and has been identified with some of the Roman villae or postae in the Via Augusta itinerary, at some point between Villena and Font de la Figuera. Near the latter there is evidence of an old Tower already ruined by the 14th century. As for the origin of the term Villena, there is some polemic. Menéndez Pidal proposed an evolution from a hypothetic antroponym Bellius or Vellius and the sufix -ana, as in Lucena (Lucius + -ana) or Maracena (Marcus + -ana), which would give the Roman word Belliana or Velliana. However, Belliana or Bellius have not been documented in Roman times, as well as the evolution from Belliana to Villena involves several phonetic difficulties. So, Domene Verdú indicates that the origin of the toponym would be the term بليانة Bilyāna, purely Arabic, meaning "the filled (by Allah)". This Arabic term, documented from the 11th century on, evolved in two ways. On the one hand, following the rules of Medieval Spanish, to Belliena, as is written in the Historia Roderici (around 1180). On the other hand, Belliena was replaced by the Aragonese term Billena after the Christian conquest, which was carried out mostly by Aragonese and Catalan. The current spelling was consolidated around the 15th century, since Spanish had totally lost the distinction between and and writing was attracted by the word villa, meaning "town".
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