Suintila

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Statue in Madrid (J. Bustos, 1750-53).

From 621 to 631, Suintila (or Swinthila, Svinthila, d. 633) was Visigothic King of Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula). There was a new peace in the Kingdom of the Visigoths. As a direct result, by 624, the king was able to retake those lands that had been under the control of Byzantium.

On the linguistic front, it was around Suintila's time that a secondary form of the word Hispania was growing in usage: Spania, from which the modern name of Spain originated.^[1] According to St. Isidore of Seville, who died in 636, it was with the Visigothic domination of Hispania that the idea of a peninsular unity was sought, and the phrase mater Spania ("mother Hispania") was first spoken. Up to that date it had been the word Hispania that designated all of the peninsula's lands. In Historia Gothorum, Suintila appears as the first king of totius Spaniae. In De laude Spaniae ("About Hispania's Pride") the country is dealt with as a Gothic nation.

[edit] See also

Imperator totius Hispaniae

[edit] Notes

^ Notice that before the emergence of the modern country of Spain (beginning with the union of Castile and Aragon in 1492), the Latin word Hispania, in any of the Iberian Romance languages, either in singular or plural forms (in English: Spain or Spains), was used to refer to the whole of the Iberian Peninsula, and not exclusively, as in modern usage, to the country of Spain, thus excluding Portugal.