The Maltese islands have been dominated by various rulers who left an imprint on the life, customs, and language of the inhabitants. This is evident also in the toponymy of the archipelago. The names of places, towns, and villages of the larger island, Malta, provide interesting samples of these admixtures. The names of the town and villages of Gozo are no exception. The legal name of the capital, Victoria, reflects the very recent history of the islands; Malta under British rule. However, its older one, Rabat, and most of the names of the villages and smaller inhabited areas, corroborate the dominating Semitic element in the Maltese language, and the mixed history of the islands and their people. This paper gives a hypothetical etymology, together with a descriptive linguistic picture, of each of the names, and discusses the relationship each has within the prismatic context of the Maltese language, but especially toponymy.peer-reviewe
