250 Dr Beke on the Mountains forming 
montory of Selene. As the identity of the two terms Luna 
and Selene was better known in Ptolemy’s time that it is even 
in our own, we may conclude that he deemed it needless to 
offer an explanation of what was self-evident. The deficiency, 
if considered material, is however made good by Strabo, who 
states explicitly that “the city and harbour of Luna are 
named by the Greeks the harbour and city of Selene.” * © 
Nevertheless, there is no sufficient reason for believing the 
Etruscan name of Luna to have involved a supposed connec- 
tion with the earth’s satellite any more than that of the African 
U-Nyamwezi. It is true that the Romans regarded the former 
name as signifying the moon, and as having, indeed, been 
derived from that planet: nominis est auctor Sole corusca 
soror are the express words of the poet Rutilius.t But the 
better opinion is, that “ Luna was an Etruscan word, misinter- 
preted by the Romans. For the three chief ports on this coast, 
as we learn from coins, had this termination to their names, 
Luna, Pupluna (Populonia), and Vetluna (Vetulonia) ; and as 
no inland town of Etruria had the same ending, it is not im- 
probable that Luna had a maritime signification, and meant 
‘a port ;’—this, which has no prefix to its name, being, from 
its superior size, pre-eminently ‘the port’ of Etruria.” { 
In a precisely similar manner the Greek expression, ‘‘ the 
Mountains of the Moon,” was derived from the name U-Nyam- 
wezi, through the Sawahili term Mwezi, which signifies 
moon. Still it does not at all follow that the word U-Nyam- 
wezi, or any portion of it, is significant, in the same sense, In 
the native language of that country itself, any more than that 
Luna in the Etruscan language means moon, or that Java 
means barley in the aboriginal tongue of that island. 
In proceeding to explain my views of the subject at the 
present stage of the inquiry, I would premise, in the words of 
Captain Burton, that, ‘“‘in the Kisawahili [7.e., the language 
of the Sawahilis], and its cognates, the vowel u prefixed to a 
a root, which, however, is never used without some prefix, de- 
* Nodvn woris tori wad Amy, xaAOUGL Of “EAAnvis Beagvyns Ayetva xo) woAw.—Lib. Vv. 
cap. ii. § 6. 
+ Itiner., lib. ii. v. 64. 
{ Dennis, ‘‘ The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria,” vol. i. p. 83, note. 
