Italy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe assumptions on the etymology of the name “Italia” are very numerous and the corpus of the solutions proposed by historians and linguists is very wide. According to one of the more common explanations, the term , from Latin: Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning “land of young cattle” ( cf. Lat vitulus “calf”, Umb vitlo “calf”). The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides.