Etymology[edit]
According to Adrian Room’s book Place-names of the World, the name Etna originated from the Phoenician word attuna meaning "furnace" or "chimney". He dismisses the hypothesis that Etna is from the Greek αἴθω (aithō) - meaning "I burn" - through an iotacist pronunciation.[6] In Classical Greek, it is called Αἴτνη (Aítnē),[7] a name given also to Catania and the city originally known as Inessa, and in Latin it is called Aetna. In Arabic, it was called جبل النار Jabal al-Nār (the Mountain of Fire).[8]
It is also known as Mungibeddu in Sicilian and Mongibello or Montebello in Italian (An Italian corrupted word literally meaning Monte mountain and Bello meaning beautiful, but is actually thought to be from the Latin mons and the Arabic جبل jabal, both meaning mountain, producing a tautological place name, "mountain mountain").[9] The term is not in common use today, although some older people still call it this. According to another hypothesis the term Mongibello comes from the Latin Mulciber (qui ignem mulcet, who placates the fire), one of the Latin names of the god Vulcan.
The people of the Etna sometimes use the jargon term 'a muntagna, simply "the mountain" par excellence.
Nowadays, the term Mongibello indicates the mountain's top area of the two central craters encompassing also the craters in the southeast and the northeast of the volcanic cone.