ABSTRACT
The matter of the name has particularly worried scholars ("the greatest torment of the etymologists" in the words of R. Menendez Pidal). The various origins proposed (Latin, Arabic, Egyptian, Iberian, and so on) for the name have been brandished in respective defence of either an Arab or preArab founding of the city. The three suggested Arabic etymologies run up against serious linguistic and philological obstacles,7 and also have working against them the fact, [295] attested to in the sources, that the toponym predated the founding of the city. Recently, A. Gonzalez Blanco and R. Pocklington have shown-convincingly, in my view-the Latin character of the name,8 although not in the direction taken by R. Menendez Pidal, who saw in the toponym "(acqua) murcida" .9 Their etymology of "Villa Murtea" seems very suggestive to me personally, recalling as it does those myrtles which our great poet al-Qarta,janni evoked when singing of the Murcian countryside.10
