Spain meaning

Meaning

Coney Island, Treasure Coast

Picked Clean, Land Of Scarcity

Etymology

From (1) אי ('i), coast, island, mark, desire, and (2) שפן (shapan), rabbit, or צפין (sapin), treasure, north, from the verb צפה (sapa), to cover or protect.

From σπανιος (spanios), rare, scarce or seldom.

Related names

• Via אי ('i): Aiah, Aiim, Bavvai, Evi, Ichabod, Iim, Ithamar, Jezebel, Kibroth-hattaavah, Ophir, Uel, Uphaz

• Via צפין (sapin): Atroth-shophan, Baal-zephon, Elizaphan, Ishpan, Mizpah, Ramathaim-zophim, Ramath-mizpeh, Shaphan, Zaphenath-paneah, Zaphon, Zephaniah, Zephath, Zephathah, Zepho, Ziphion, Zophai, Zophim, Zuph

In the first century, the Greek name Σπανια (Spania) corresponded to what the ancients had called Ισπανια (Hispania) and the Romans likewise referred to as Hispania: the landmass at the south-western tip of Europe, which today is referred to as the Iberian Peninsula and comprises Portugal and Spain.

Spain is mentioned only twice in the New Testament, in Romans 15:24 and 15:28, where Paul connects a trip to Rome to a further journey to Spain. In the Middle Ages, Jews living in Spain referred to themselves as Sephardi and claimed that this name did not derive from the name Sepharad (as it seems to do and probably does) but rather from the name Hispania. Famous Sephardic Jews were Maimonides, who in the 11th century codified Jewish law and Moses de León, who in the 12th century produced the magnificent Sepher Zohar (for more on these two brilliant sages, see our article on Gog and Magog).

The Iberian Peninsula has been inhabited by humans since deep antiquity. Gibraltar was where the last of the Neanderthals held out until they finally succumbed around 40,000 BCE. Long after, native cultures thrived: the dazzling cave paintings found at Altamira (on the northern, Atlantic coast of Spain) were produced from around 40,000 BCE to as late as 15,000 BCE.

Spain was put on the historical map when its coasts were settled by Phoenicians, possibly as early as the 12th century BC, starting with Cadiz, near Gibraltar according to classical but not undisputed sources. These same sources also make mention of a place called Tartessos, which was either a city or a region that spread out into southern Spain from Gibraltar up (and would have engulfed ancient Cadiz), and sported a hybrid mixture of native and Phoenician cultures that even produced its own language and writing system.

Whatever happened to Tartessos, or even in what way it existed, remains a mystery. We also don't know where the name Tartessos came from — although to us here at Abarim Publications, it rather reminds of ארץ ('eres), land, and תשורה (teshura), gift, from the verb שור (shur), to excite or be raised. For reasons that will become clearer below, we should also mention that from this same verb comes the noun שור (shor), meaning ox or bull, which may have been the source of the familiar word ταυρος (tauros), also meaning bull, which in turn is the source of the Spanish word for bull: toro.

We also don't exactly know why early Phoenicians from Tyre in Canaan began to settle that distant area with such enthusiasm, but it's possible that they were attracted by the abundance of gold and silver there. Gold trade between the Phoenicians and the native Iberians is well documented from the 7th century BC on, but probably existed since much earlier. Still, although the Phoenicians are mostly remembered for their magnificent fleet and trading empire, their greatest gift to the world was the alphabet, with which they administrated their commerce. What continues to be under-emphasized is that the invention of such a marvel that is the alphabet requires a tradition deeply steeped in literary wisdom.

The alphabet is a technological marvel, and could only have come about in a tradition that was already deeply dependent on information management and pursuant of ever better and more efficient information technology. When the alphabet was completed, it triggered an information age that changed the entire world. The Phoenicians appear to have understood that no single person is ever as wise as a group of common folk who can somehow bundle their intuitions (Exodus 19:6). The author James Surowiecki would later refer to this phenomenon as The Wisdom of the Crowds (2004, Doubleday, New York), and it appears that the Tyrian Phoenicians used their trade mostly as a vehicle to form the world's original Internet (Genesis 22:14-18, Isaiah 2:3, Romans 14:11, Revelation 3:18).

The Greco-Romans referred to the Strait of Gibraltar as the Pillars of Hercules, which they regarded as the end of the world — not the physical earth but rather in the sense of the κοσμος (kosmos), the structured human world of trade and governance, and more significantly: military protection. The motto of the Pillars of Hercules was "non plus ultra", meaning "nothing further beyond", but in the sense of "after this, you're on your own" rather than suggesting that there was no earth or sea beyond. There clearly was. Britain had been known to exist for at least four centuries BCE as much of Europe's tin came from there.

The symbol of the Pillars of Hercules, however, became the two vertical lines of the dollar sign, and later those of the Euro, the Yen and even Bitcoin and Cardano. It also inspired the design of the original World Trade Center in New York, as it stood from 1973 to 2001, and the assault on that building was first and foremost an assault on the free market — not only of goods, services and money but also of information. That freedom of exchange of information is ultimately the road to mankind's destiny to be utterly united in mind and spirit so as to collectively commune with the greater world and ultimately the Creator himself.

The Phoenicians, whose language was closely similar to Biblical Hebrew, also named Spain, as we will see below. As we discuss in much more detail in our article on the name Phoenicia, between the 12th and 8th centuries BC, the Phoenicians had little to no challengers in the Mediterranean, and their invention of the alphabet allowed them to administer their trading empire like a well-oiled machine. The whole of Europe learned writing from the Phoenicians and their many settlements were seen as houses of generosity and enlightenment much rather than the forts of unwelcome invaders.

Because of the lure of the art of writing, the Semitic language and stories also seeped into the European conversation — see our article on the many Hebrew roots of the Greek language — which would help to explain why so many familiar European names have a suspicious Semitic ring to them. The name Britain, for instance, is rather obviously similar to the noun ברית (berit), meaning covenant, which suggests that the Phoenicians may have had a trading agreement with the natives there (note that the Hebrew name of the United States is likewise ארצות הברית, arzot ha berith). The name Iberia, to name another example, is thought to derive from the name of the river Ebro, but is rather similar to the common root עבר ('abar), meaning to cross over; the same root from which comes the name Hebrew. If the origin of the name Iberia is indeed ultimately Phoenician, it simply means Land On The Other Side (of the Mediterranean: the Phoenician home was Tyre in Canaan). If this name was originally conceived as an imperfect, יעבר (ya'abar), it would have meant He/It Causes To Cross Over (because of its natural treasures and interesting natives). That would relate the name of the Spanish river Ebro to that of the Italian river Tiber, from which derives the name Tiberius. And is the name Gibraltar really a pure derivation of the name Jabal Tariq (after the original Muslim conqueror of Iberia), or was it molded on an otherwise undocumented but existing name that involved the name Gabriel, or Man Of God, the Semitic counterpart of Hercules (and see Genesis 3:24)? Note that since time immemorial, Gibraltar has been recognized as the proverbial Rock at the end of the world, the counter-pole of Tyre (means Rock), which was the Rock at the beginning of it.

By the 9th century BCE, king Solomon and the Phoenician king Hiram of Tyre were building the temple in Jerusalem, and since the tribes of Naphtali, Zebulun, Asher and a portion of Dan were living in Phoenician territories, it's nearly inconceivable that no Israelites had ever accompanied their Phoenician neighbors to Iberia (although perhaps not always voluntarily: see Amos 1:9). In the 8th century BCE, the Greeks too began to create colonies in Iberia. And in the 3rd century, the Romans invaded and began a conquest that was not completed until 19 CE, well into the Imperial Age.

The Romans did so because they wanted control over the western Mediterranean, as well as the vast natural resources that were present in Iberia (now called Hispania), which they began to extract at an outrageous scale, ruining the land as they went along. By the first century CE, Jewish communities were well established in Spain, but probably the most salient association with Spain came via Hannibal, the legendary Carthaginian (Phoenician) commander who had amassed an army in Spain and in 211 BCE had marched it across the Alps and onto the very gates of Rome. He nearly succeeded in destroying Rome but ultimately failed, and the fear he had caused quickly translated into the dictum Carthago delenda est: Carthage is to be destroyed. This was realized in 146 BCE: an event of unprecedented shame and horror, from which the enemies of Rome would draw their lessons until well into the modern age.

The apostle Paul wrote in highly perilous times, and used whatever precedent from history to warn his audience against the temptation of taking up arms against the Romans. But because he could not afford the smallest hint of a suggestion that his addressees might actually be considering a revolt, he most often wrote in very clever code (see our articles on names like Sopater, Pyrrhus and Aeneas). In our article on Arabia we propose that the phrase "going to Arabia" may have been an expression, a colloquial idiom that described a going about without a plan or headquarters (not unlike the idea of "settling" in the Land of Nod). Likewise, Paul's express wish to "go to Spain" may very well have been code for saying that he was about to "march" on Rome and this time enter it. (Also his place of birth, Tarsus, may as a comparable literary pun have been associated to Tarshish, which in turn may have been linked to Tartessos in Spain).

In 76 CE, the future emperor Hadrian was born in Italica in southern Spain.

To anybody who spoke Greek, the name Σπανια (Spania) would certainly have resembled the adjective σπανιος (spanios), meaning rare, uncommon or scarce. This adjective stems from the noun σπανις (spanis), meaning rarity or scarcity but mostly in a negative sense: aloof, rarely seen, lacking or being insufficient like a tiny trickle of water. In later Byzantine Greek, this word was used to derogatorily describe a beardless man. Where the noun σπανις (spanis), rarity, comes from isn't clear, but a good candidate is the verb σπαω (spao), to draw or pull close, but usually in a violent way: the pulling of swords or the dragging off of booty.

The Greeks came after the Phoenicians and appear to have wryly rendered the Phoenician Treasure Coast the nickname Picked Clean. The Romans, however, knew that when the surface treasures had been swept up, one could always blast one's way to subterranean deposits. The Romans used hydraulics to wash away the organic surface earth, and so ruined vast swathes of precious farm land. But, even more wryly, they restored the Phoenician name: Hispania, Treasure Coast.

The name Spain, or Hispania, is almost certainly Phoenician, or was at least formed when an existing native term was adopted and adapted to match a suitable Semitic phrase. It consists of two parts, which exists in close similarity in Hebrew. The first part of our name is the word אי ('i), which means coast and may also refer to an island:

The second part of our name corresponds either to the Hebrew word שפן (shapan), meaning rabbit or rock-badger, or any of the nouns derived from the verb צפה (sapa), to cover or hide:

The Phoenicians probably simply referred to Spain as Treasure Coast and not Coney Island although the pun appears to have been established well enough for Roman coins minted during Hadrian's reign to have rabbits on them. The European rabbit (one of dozens of species of rabbits and hares) indeed originated on the Iberian Peninsula but by Roman times had spread all over Europe and had been introduced to all the islands by seafarers. It's not inconceivable, however, that this rabbit's original name had traveled with it.

The Latin word for rabbit, namely cuniculus (hence the English word coney and the German Kaninchen) is thought to derive from a diminutive of a widely attested Celtic word for dog, namely cun- (say Ballester and Quinn in World Rabbit Science, vol 10, pp 125-129), which links it to the Latin word canis (hence canine) and the Greek word κυων (kuon), both meaning dog. Nobody in the original audience of the gospel of Matthew and Mark would have missed the pun passed by the Canaanite/Syrophoenician woman: "Yes, Lord, but even the little dogs under the table feed on the children's crumbs" (Matthew 15:26-27, Mark 7:27-28).

It's not uncommon for some strange new animal to be named after some other, more familiar one (think hippopotamus, sea lion, catfish, prairie dog), but rabbits and dogs sit on either side of a very rigid divide. As we explain in our articles on Jacob and Esau, the split between the two brothers also reflects the divide between animals that are plantigrade (mice, rabbits, apes, humans) and those that are digitigrade (all deer and cattle but also all predators).

The Jacobite creatures are slow flat-footers who invest in the defense of their common house (Proverbs 3:5-6, Isaiah 52:7, Nahum 1:15, Ephesians 6:15), whereas the Edomites are fast toe-walkers who invest in their own private speed and a pair of private horns. As the story tells (Genesis 25:27), the flat-foot Jacobites prefer to live in holes, burrows and ultimately tents and houses, whereas the toe-walking Edomites prefer to roam the open range. The Jacobites have at the center of their lives their communal house, which is where they secure their young, weak and old, and where the strong bring food to. The Edomites have self-preservation at the center of their lives and run toward what they like and away from what they don't like. Jacobite creatures have family and cooperation as their prime directive, and their lifestyle naturally gravitates upon a monotheistic worldview, with the deity (or his temple) at the heart of their world and ever-closer circles of unity concentric around him. The Edomite creatures have competition as their prime directive and their lifestyle naturally gravitates upon a dualistic worldview, with whatever they dislike represented as some satanic predator behind them and whatever they like as some elusive paradise ever up ahead (Psalm 41:9, John 13:18).

It cannot be overemphasized that in evolutionary terms, the Edomite lifestyle produces the satan they themselves will forever run away from. All mammalian predators, whether feliform (lions, tigers, mongooses) and caniform (wolves, bears, weasels, seals), are digitigrade and hence close cousins of herd animals. Herd animals are mostly fear driven, and when the herd stampedes, the old and weak fall behind and are in effect sacrificed to whatever drove the herd to stampede.

In the classical era, Esau began to personify Europe and specifically Rome, whereas Jacob had always represented the Semites, who hence became depicted as mice and rabbits — and frogs, probably because the name ספרדי (sephardi), Sephardic, resembles the noun צפרדע (separdea'), frog: see our article on Frogs, Jews and Republics. This continues more or less lovingly until our present day, as is attested by stories like Watership Down, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Maus, 8 Mile, When God Was A Rabbit, and characters like Micky Mouse (everybody's favorite Black/Jewish hybrid), Harvey (America's tacit Celtic/Jewish conscience) and Kermit the Frog (the reluctant director of the world's crazy stage where each must play a part), and so on.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, European manuscripts began to appear with illuminations in them that depicted killer rabbits (cartoonish rabbits hunting and killing humans). These illuminations quickly took on a life of their own, but they may very well have been inspired by worries concerning the Reconquista: the period from the 8th to the 15th century during which European nations tried to drive the Muslims out of Spain (Arabs, of course, are also Semitic).

Many Iberian Jews fled north, and many of those became crypto-Jews: folks who were outwardly Protestant but at home secretly continued in their Jewish practices. This idea of an underground network of Jewishness is obviously not far removed from a network of tunnels dug by mice or rabbits. Long before they became everybody's favorite pets, mice and rabbits symbolized pests and destruction by thievery and wanton consumption — the Spanish word for crypto-Jew is marrano, and although this word's etymology is hard to pinpoint, in modern Spanish it means "pig" in the sense of "filthy person".

Mice and rabbits have always been symbols of prolific reproduction, and so are eggs: in Slavic languages, the word for egg also means testicle. Popular mythology was quick to note that Jews (like fungi and the Phoenix bird) cannot be eradicated, because even when no visible traces remain, their roots stay alive underground, and as soon as the climate turns, the Jews pop right back up. Sure enough, the Easter Bunny is first reported of in late 17th century Germany (the idea that the Easter Bunny derives from some ancient pagan folklore is false). Rather obviously, a rabbit that lays eggs is not a rabbit but a snake that looks like a rabbit. The Greek word for snake is δρακων (drakon), and since the much loathed business of usury was the only business available for Jews, Europe very quickly spawned the familiar folklore of the dragon seated upon a treasure hoard.

Some commentators have proposed that our name Hispania has to do with צפון (sapon), meaning north, so that Spain was known as the North Country. That seems rather implausible, as the Phoenicians knew of lands much farther north, and Spain relative to Carthage in Tunis or Tyre in Canaan was much more decidedly westward than northward. Another cited source of our name Hispania is some mythological hero called Hispan, whose name is said to derive from Baal-zephon, or Lord of the North (from the same word צפון, sapon, north). But origin stories that involve mythological founders most commonly work the other way around: the founders are invented and named after the land they legendarily founded.

From the point of view of literary puns, perhaps a more rewarding pattern has to do with the Temple in Jerusalem, which was a joint venture between kings Solomon and Hiram of Tyre, and which story rather obviously tells of the formation of the alphabet (see our article on YHWH) and its subsequent worldwide semination. The relationship between Judah and Tyre went sour, as famously lamented by the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 26-28), which is worthy of note because Solomon's united Kingdom tore apart when his workforce under Jeroboam rebelled due to Solomon's building of the Millo. Like the name Spain, the name Millo means Storage or Treasury (Proverbs 11:28, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Matthew 6:19-21).