Island place names and historical cartography: Ponziane Islands

Islands have fascinated men since ancient times due to the semantic versatility they have, and almost all of them have been represented in historical cartography, both to understand their distribution in the sea and to recognize them through their denomination. The analysis of the island toponymy allows us to grasp the nuances of the territorialization process that affects the places. Focusing on Ponziane Islands, this paper aims to observe the permanence, transformation, substitution and oblivion of the names of the islands and places on them through the analysis of the historical cartography of the 16th to 19th centuries, also observing linguistic dynamics. In a long-term analysis of the archipelago, historical cartography is a useful tool for understanding the territorial dynamics, the degree of interest of the various Italian and Mediterranean players in the islands, as well as the level of knowledge of the places represented.