What geographical area of the Roman world was called Vectis?

looney_tunes

Isle of Wight was called Insula Vectis http://www.redfunnel.co.uk/my-isle-of-wight/features/roman-vectis/ Nov 12 12, 11:39 AM

eyhung

The Isle of Wight. In the 1st century BC, the Graeco-Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus (V. 22) refers to an unlocated ????? (=Ictim): this is possibly a reference to the Isle of Wight.[1] A century later, Pliny the elder uses Vectis and in the mid 2nd century Ptolemy confirms the position of Vectis as "...below Magnus Portus."[2] The form Vectis seems reasonably robust but Rivet and Smith [3] were uncertain of its etymology. A gloss on an AD 1164 MS of Nennius that equates Anglo-Saxon wiht with Latin divorcium has encouraged many writers to think that the Isle of Wight sits like a lever (Latin vectis) between the two arms of the Solent and/or that there was an underlying Celtic root akin to Irish fecht "journey" or Welsh gwaith "work". However, a 2010 detailed study of the etymology [4]draws attention to the proto-Germanic root *wextiz, which would have been written Vectis in Latin, and survives in various modern-language forms, including English whit (something small), German wicht (dwarf/imp) and Dutch wicht (little girl). This suggests that an early form of the name Wight actually preceded Vectis, and that the fundamental meaning is something like "daughter island" or "little companion". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Isle_of_Wight Nov 12 12, 11:40 AM