Cyrenaica In a wider sense, still in use, Cyrenaica includes all of the eastern part of Libya, including the Kufra District. Cyrenaica borders on Tripolitania in the northwest and on Fezzan in the southwest. The region that used to be Cyrenaica officially until 1963 has formed several shabiyat, the administrative divisions of Libya, since 1995. The 2011 Libyan Civil War started in Cyrenaica, which came largely under the control of the National Transitional Council (headquartered in Benghazi) for most of the war. In 2012, the National Transitional Council declared Cyrenaica to be an autonomous region of Libya. Geologically, Cyrenaica rests on
Name of Greece "Graecia" (Greek: ), literally meaning 'the land of the Greeks', which was used by Ancient Romans to denote the area of modern-day Greece. Similarly, the Latin name of the nation was "Graeci", which is the origin of the English name "Greeks". Those names, in turn, trace their origin from "Graecus", the Latin adaptation of the Greek name Γραικός (pl. ), which means 'Greek', but its etymology remains uncertain. It is unclear why the Romans called the country "Graecia" and its people "Graeci", but the Greeks called their land "Hellas" and themselves "Hellenes". Several speculations have been made. William Smith notes