A Gozitan documented in 12th century Norman Sicily

Abstract

When I published the large corpus of Gozitan toponyms (which were collected from over 65 different sources) (Salafia, 2020: 562-567), I decided not to include the meaning of each place-name. The main reason for this is that I realised that this corpus of more than 9,400 catalogue entries contained toponymic terms which are not encountered in Wettinger’s seminal publication (Wettinger, 2000) about place-names. After the publication of the second volume (which is a detailed analysis of Wettinger’s Gozitan toponyms), I was more than convinced that I took the right decision, since to decipher the etymology of Gozitan (and also Maltese) place-names, one needs to possess a very good understanding and knowledge of Arabic and/ or Muslim names. In the second volume (Salafia, 2022: 189-262), there is a glossary of toponymic terms, in which there is a detailed explanation of more than eight hundred terms. This is basically a Dictionary of Gozitan Toponymic Terms.