The name of the island's chief city, Mahón (now Maó), appears to derive from the name of the Punic leader Mago Barca.
[1] The name of the island is of Latin origin, and dates from after the Roman conquest, led by Quintus Caecilius Metellus in 123 BC, during a campaign which earned him the agnomen Balearicus.
The island was briefly subsumed under the Vandal kingdom of Africa around 427, but it was eventually reconquered by the Romans and incorporated in the Byzantine Empire.
During the War of the Spanish Succession, the island was taken by the French in 1707 with no military action, but in 1708 it was captured by the British, whose sovereignty was recognised in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713).
Britain handed Menorca back to Spain under the Treaty of Amiens (1802), having chosen to keep Malta as a Mediterranean base instead.