-tania

The suffix -tania or -etania (English demonym "-tanian", "-tanians")[note 1] denotes a territory or region in the Iberian Peninsula. Its historical origin is in the pre-Roman Iberia. Its etymological origin is discussed by linguists. Spanish Jesuit philologist Hervás y Panduro proposed their link to the Celtic languages, in which the root *tan or *taín means department or region.[1] "In Irish, tan (genitive, tain) expresses the idea of country, territory."

Other philologists such as Pablo Pedro Astarloa suggest a combination of the Basque abundance suffix *-eta (as in Arteta, Lusarreta, Olleta) with the Latin root *nia used in place names (such as Romania, Hispania, Italia).[1]

The form of demonym used by some epigraphs in the Iberian language found in coins is -ken or -sken, as in Ikalesken, which is unrelated to the Latin-Hispanic -tanus. This suggests that -tania may be a denomination of Roman origin. According to the historian and archaeologist Manuel Gómez-Moreno, the Latin suffix -tani corresponds to the Iberian -scen,[2] For example, the Ausetanians (Ausetani) who called themselves Ausesken. The Romans also applied this suffix to other peoples of the western Mediterranean (Sardinia and Sicily), and to a lesser extent to those of the Italian Peninsula, where however the suffix -ates prevails. Before Roman contact with the Iberian peoples, there were already Greek colonies in Iberia. The ancient Greeks used the older suffix -ητες (-etes), -εται or -ηται (-etai), which would be replaced by -ητανοι or -ετανοι (-etani), according to researcher Ulrich Schmoll (1953).[3]

Another theory, partially developed by the Aragonese jurist Joaquín Costa, relates that suffix to the Berber *ait, which means both "son of" and "the tribe", or with *at, meaning "people." This theory that supports that "aide" (aita) is a relative in Basque.[4]