1371: hibernia and hibernation Sep 12, 2018

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The following post comes from a fan question.
The word in Latin for 'Ireland' is 'Hibernia', still seen today in the combining form 'Hiberno-', and the word 'Hibernianism' (an Irish idiom), but this is not related to the word 'hibernate', or any other term related to winter such as 'hibernal'. Both of those sets of words do come from Latin, and while Ireland may be cold, 'Hibernia' is not originally Romantic. Originally it is from Celtic—not Irish Gaelic—from the word for a goddess 'Ériu' but the word only entered Latin via Greek 'Iverna'. This, in turn, has led certain people to claim that the Irish descended from or were slaves of Greeks. Whether or not this is true, the Latin 'hibernus' ('winter') is ultimately of romantic origin, and only coincidentally sounds similar. However, many Latin writers and ethnographers made puns out of this similarity.
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