page_title: Tenerife
section_title: Toponymy
hierarchical_section_title: Tenerife / Toponymy
caption_attribution_description: Panorama des Pico de Teide auf Teneriffa
context_page_description: Tenerife is the largest and most populated island of the eight Canary Islands. It is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 square kilometres and 917,841 inhabitants at the start of 2019, 43 percent of the total population of the Canary Islands. Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of Macaronesia.
  Approximately five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, making it the most visited island of the archipelago. It is one of the most important tourist destinations in Spain, hosting one of the world's largest carnivals, the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
  Tenerife is served by two airports, Tenerife North Airport and Tenerife South Airport. Tenerife is the economic capital of the Canary Islands.
  The capital of the island, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, is also the seat of the island council. The city is the capital of the autonomous community of Canary Islands, sharing governmental institutions such as presidency and ministries. Between the 1833 territorial division of Spain and 1927, Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the sole capital of the Canary Islands.
context_section_description: The name Tenerife comes from Guanche teni (mountain) + ife (snow) (literally snow mountain).
  The island's indigenous people, the Guanche Berbers, referred to the island as Achinet or Chenet in their language (variant spellings are found in the literature). According to Pliny the Younger, Berber king Juba II sent an expedition to the Canary Islands and Madeira; he named the Canary Islands for the particularly ferocious dogs (canaria) on the island. Juba II and Ancient Romans referred to the island of Tenerife as Nivaria, derived from the Latin word nix (nsg.; gsg. nivis, npl. nives), meaning snow, referring to the snow-covered peak of the Teide volcano. Later maps dating to the 14th and 15th century, by mapmakers such as Bontier and Le Verrier, refer to the island as Isla del Infierno, literally meaning "Island of Hell", referring to the volcanic activity and eruptions of Mount Teide.
  The Benahoaritas (natives of La Palma) are said to have named the island, deriving it from the words teni ("mountain") and ife ("white"). After colonisation, the Hispanisation of the name resulted in adding the letter "r" to unite both words, producing Tenerife.
  However, throughout history there have been other explanations to reveal the origin of the name of the island. For example, the 18th-century historians Juan Núñez de la Peña and Tomás Arias Marín de Cubas, among others, state that the island was likely named by natives for the legendary Guanche king, Tinerfe, nicknamed "the Great". He ruled the entire island in the days before the conquest of the Canary Islands by Castile.
caption: Panorama of Teide National Park
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