The suffix -tania or -etania (English demonym "-tanian", "-tanians")[note 1] denotes a territory or region in the Iberian Peninsula.
Spanish Jesuit philologist Hervás y Panduro proposed their link to the Celtic languages, in which the root *tan or *taín means department or region.
Other philologists such as Pablo Pedro Astarloa suggest a combination of the Basque abundance suffix *-eta (as in Arteta, Lusarreta, Olleta) with the Latin root *nia used in place names (such as Romania, Hispania, Italia).
[1] The form of demonym used by some epigraphs in the Iberian language found in coins is -ken or -sken, as in Ikalesken, which is unrelated to the Latin-Hispanic -tanus.
According to the historian and archaeologist Manuel Gómez-Moreno, the Latin suffix -tani corresponds to the Iberian -scen,[2] For example, the Ausetanians (Ausetani) who called themselves Ausesken.