Note 375 — Chapter LVII

The etymology of Granada is doubtful. Before the invasion of Spain by the Arabs, a small town of Phœnician origin, known as Karnattah, existed near Illiberis (Elvira), and probably on the site of the more modern city of Granada. The syllable Kar would, in Phœnician, signify “a town.” The meaning of nattah is unknown (Gayangos, i. 347; Casiri, Bib. Ar. Hisp. Esc., ii. 251; Conde, Hist. Dom., i. pp. 37–51). The supposition that the city owes its name to its resemblance to a ripe pomegranate (granada) is clearly inadmissible. As in the case of Leon, the device was adopted in consequence of its appropriateness to an existing name—although the modern city of Granada is probably not older than 1020. The Arabic word, moreover, for a pomegranate is romàn; and Soto de Roma, the name of the Duke of Wellington’s estate in Andalusia, means “the wood of the pomegranates;” and an ensalada romana is not a Roman, but a pomegranate salad (see Pedaza, Hist. Eccl. de Granada [1618], fol. 21, 22; Romey, Hist., i. 474, 475).—Burke’s Hist. of Spain, vol. i. p. 116.