Spanish Baby Names Starting with Letter "R"   Spanish Names and
Historic Naming Customs  The Iberian Peninsula, the birthplace
of Spanish, Portuguese, Catalonian and Basque names, has an
immensely colorful and rich history. We can’t help but to say
it’s one of our favorites.  The Greeks discovered the peninsula
circa the sixth century B.C. The Romans encountered the people
of Iberia during the Punic Wars with Carthage starting in the
third century B.C.   The Greeks called this geographical region
Iberia and the Romans called it Hispania. Before their
discovery, however, evidence of early forms of human life show
habitation a million years ago. Modern humans made their way
through France to the area 40,000 years ago.  Celtic tribes
settled there long before the Mediterranean powers of
Phoenician, Greek, Carthaginian and then Roman established their
respective colonies. In the third century B.C. the Roman
Republic invaded the Iberian Peninsula and folded it into their
empire where it remained for almost eight c