Where does the word "Vatican" come from and what does it mean?
Significantly, the Vatican Hill stands as the closest and highest point in direct line of sight over the Field of Mars from the sacred Capitolium Temple Complex on Capitoline Hill.Given its height above the Tiber River flood plains, its powerful geometric line of sight to the Capitolium and being outside the ancient city walls, from the 5th Century BCE onwards it became the most sacred Necropolis (Cemetery) for famous and noble Romans. One of the original names for the Hill being the “City (Hill) of the Divine” and a city of the dead.The word from the Latin vates, which means "tellers of the future." This name was the name given to a hillside on the west bank of the Tiber River in Rome because daily lineups of fortunetellers used to hawk their "wares" there to passersby on the street. In the fourteenth century, when the papacy was returned to Rome from Avignon (France), the present-day Vatican became the residence of the popes, and the word came to refer to the enclave in the middle of Rome that had become the seat of the Roman Catholic Church. Aulus Gellius, writing in the 2nd century, also said the word Vatican was derived from the word vaticinia, or prophecies, in his Attic Nights, book 16, chapter 17.
Vaticanus then is a combination of Vatic+ANUS, just as Romanus is a combination of Rome+Anus. Therefore, vaticanus collis or vaticanus mons mean "the prophetic hill or mountain", which can be rephrased as the hill or mountain of prophecy.
