section_path: Etymology
section_name: Etymology
paragraph_text: Etymology
  
  The name of Spain (España) comes from Hispania, the name used by the Romans for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces during the Roman Empire. The etymology of the term Hispania is uncertain, although the Phoenicians referred to the region as i-shphan-im possibly meaning "land of hyraxes ", "land of metals", or "northern island".
  
  In the traditional account, i-shphan-im may be a derivation of the Phoenician i-shpania, meaning "island or land of hyraxes", or "edge", a reference to Spain's location at the end of the Mediterranean; Phoenicians were unfamiliar with rabbits, and confused them for hyraxes. Roman coins struck in the region from the reign of Hadrian show a female figure with a rabbit at her feet, and Strabo called it the "land of the rabbits".
  
  Semitic philologists Jesús Luis Cunchillos and José Ángel Zamora hypothesise, following a comparative study between several Semitic languages, that the Phoenician name translates as "land where metals are forged", having determined that the name originated in reference to the gold mines of the Iberian Peninsula. Cunchillos argues that the root of the term span is the Phoenician word spy, meaning 'to forge metals '. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean "the land where metals are forged".