Italy may be named after calves, and it once meant only a toe
The name Italia may trace back to an Oscan word meaning land of calves, and early Greeks applied it only to the very tip of the peninsula. Over centuries the label crept north to the Alps. Today around 80 million people worldwide claim Italian ancestry, far more than live in Italy.
Ancient writers including Aristotle and Thucydides mention the calf etymology alongside a legend of a King Italus. According to Antiochus of Syracuse, Greeks first used the name for the southern part of the Bruttium peninsula, around modern Reggio and Catanzaro, before extending it to Lucania and Calabria. Cato the Elder later described Italy as everything south of the Alps, which he called its walls. Rome formally absorbed Cisalpine Gaul into Italy in 42 BCE under Octavian, and Diocletian added Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica.
Before Rome, the peninsula was a patchwork of tribal territories. The Latins, based in Rome, dominated it by 218 BCE, and the razing of Carthage in 146 BCE, closing the Third Punic War, made Rome the leading Mediterranean power. After the Social War, Rome extended citizenship to all Italic peoples in 88 BC, completing the Romanisation of Italy. Civil wars then wrecked the Republic, and Octavian, victorious in 31 BC, became the first emperor. Latin distinguished an Italicus, a man of Italy, from provincials; the word Italianus arose in the Middle Ages. After the western empire fell, the Lombards kept the name Italia for their kingdom.
Language is more varied than many assume. Most Italians speak Standard Italian, a Romance language descended from Vulgar Latin, but UNESCO counts roughly 30 languages native to Italy, several older than the national tongue and often wrongly dismissed as dialects. Attachment to one's own region or town remains strong.
About 55 million Italians live in Italy, making up 91 percent of its nationals. Italian speakers also live in Switzerland, France, Istria and Dalmatia, and make up all of San Marino. Emigration after unification and both world wars spread the diaspora widely: more than 5 million Italian citizens live abroad, and people of Italian descent account for about 15 percent of Brazilians and 60 percent of Argentinians, with large communities in the United States and Canada.
Source: Italians
