Italia: Mercator Place Names in 1554

by Maridonna Benvenuti

© 2001, 2013 Andrea Hicks; all rights reserved
last updated 20Feb13

I am very grateful to Joshua Mittleman for his help.

The place names of Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, 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 Mercator maps are now in the British Museum. My copy of 'Italia' was obtained from Walking Tree Press.

Please be aware that there are both Latin and Italian place names on the map.

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. Some areas of the map were faded, or on a fold, so some letters may be incorrect. Any mistakes are my own (or Mercator's).

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 asterisk at the end of the place name denotes a long s (scribal s) used within the place name. All punctuation is identical to the map.

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' occurs also.

Sources:

Mercator's 1554 map facsimile of Italia. Walking Tree Press, 1998. (541) 744-1773.

Reader's Digest Atlas of The World, Joseph Gardner, editor. ISBN 0-89577-264-7, 1991.

Cassell's Italian Dictionary, Macmillan Press. P. Rebora, F. M Guerico, and A. L. Hayward, 1977. ISBN 0-02-522540-5.