¿Hablantes de lenguas ita ́licas en Hispania? Un ana ́lisis onoma ́stico y sociolingu ̈ ́ıstico de la epigraf ́ıa latina hispana del siglo II a.C.

This paper consists of an onomastic and sociolinguistic approach to the controversial issue of the influence of Italic languages in the Latinization of the Iberian Peninsula. We propose an identification of individuals that might come from Italic-speaking areas based on an onomastic analysis of the personal names found in the earliest Latin inscriptions from Hispania (2nd cent. BCE) and on the geographical dispersion of their nomina gentilicia. The comparative study of these data and of the social status of the selected individuals (ingenui, liberti, serui ) carried out at the end of the paper shows that the group of speakers of Italic languages couldn’t have had enough relevance to exert an Oscanizing influence in the linguistic shift to Latin, according to the epigraphic record.