I had long sought a list of period place-names for Italy. When I found Mercator's map of Italy, I was very excited and set to work. Some of the names on the map are Latin, and some are Italian. Some names have their modern equivalent, others I couldn't find on a modern map. Although the scribe was incredible, I still had difficulty with letters that looked alike: t and c, d and cl, u and n, m and ni, ui and iu, etc.
The place-names of Sardinia, Sicily, Italy, and the surrounding islands, waters etc., were taken from a facsimile of the 1554 map of Italia by the explorer Gerardus Mercator, 1512 - 1594 for the King of France. The maps are now in the British Museum. My copy of 'Italia' was obtained from Walking Tree Press, 1998.
Each country has its own color so Istria has been included. There were no definite regional boundaries within Italia on the map. I have done my best to place the towns and cities in the appropriate region. The headings are as they appear on the map, as best as I could read them.
Mercator used a variety of abbreviations and shorthand notations; I've reproduced them here as best I can. A colon represents a bar or tilde over the previous letter, unless stated in the notes; this indicates an abbreviated word. An umlaut (e.g. ë) here also represents a bar or tilde, unless otherwise noted. In some cases, it is a scribal abbreviation for an n following the vowel, e.g. Vicëa for Vicenza. An asterisk at the end of the place-name indicates a long s used by the scribe within the place-name. All punctuation is identical to that used on the map.
Some areas of the map were faded, or on a fold, so some letters may be incorrect. A question mark indicates a letter that I could not read clearly. A letter in square brackets is my correction of an obvious scribal error.
The word <fiume> "river" occurs once or twice, and <fiu> occurs numerous times. It is my assumption that <fiu> is an abbreviation of <fiume>. <Ins> insula "island" also occurs.
Mercator's 1554 map facsimile of Italia. Walking Tree Press, 1998. (541) 744-1773.
Readers Digest Atlas of The World, Joseph Gardner, editor. ISBN 0-89577-264-7, 1991
Cassell's Italian Dictionary, Macmillan Press. ed. P. Rebora, F. M Guerico, and A. L. Hayward, 1977. ISBN 0-02-522540-5.
You may want to visit my onomastics and heraldry page.
Layout, editing, and publishing by Arval Benicoeur.