In his letter Origin of the names of the Maltese Archipelago (TMID, 14 June), Joseph S. Ellul declares that four Maltese islands were named by the Phoenicians, “after the flood”, after the names of seeds. As evidenced by the final sentence of his letter, he does not present this as a hypothesis but as a certainty (“That is the real origin of the names of the islands of the Maltese archipelago”).

Would Mr Ellul mind informing your readers as to which “flood” he is writing about, what incontrovertible evidence he has that it took place and at which date? Furthermore, what documentary evidence does Mr Ellul possess to demonstrate that what he states about the post-diluvian Phoenicians giving the islands the names of seeds is a fact?

As far as is known, no philologist or archaeologist has ever come up with such an explanation of the origin of the names of the Maltese islands.

The sacrosanct right to freedom of expression is one thing, presenting to the general public unfounded assumptions as fact is another.

By what names the Maltese islands were known in prehistory is unrecorded. Regarding early historical times, it is unknown by what name the Phoenicians called Malta but, as Prof. Anthony Bonanno (Malta Phoenician, Punic and Roman, Malta, Midsea Books, 2005, p. 35-36) shows, the name inscribed on Maltese coins struck in Malta after 218 BCE (the date when the islands fell to the Romans) is “‘nn” and that could have been its Phoenician/Punic name. Punic culture remained dominant for a long time after the beginning of Roman domination. The Greeks (who never colonised the islands) knew Malta as “Melite”, later Latinised to “Melita”.

As regards Gozo, Prof. Bonanno states that the earliest name recorded in literary sources is the Greek “Gaulos” or “Gaudos”. A Gozo inscription gives the Punic name of Gozo as “GWL” (Semitic languages do not represent vowels), which may be a Punic version of the Greek name and has nothing to do with Mr Ellul’s “Ghazza”, having totally different roots.

It may be that the origin of the islands’ modern names is Greek and not Semitic. It seems probable that “Gaulos/Gaudos” was turned into “Ghawdex” and “Melita” into “Malta” by the Arabs. As to “Kemmuna” and “Filfla”, there is no evidence that these have Phoenician origins.

Mario Costa

Moscow