The Φῆρες thus resembling the Ἕλλοι, we are led by their designation to another link between the name of Φῆραι with its cognates and the Hellic race. It seems thus far as if Φηραὶ were the appropriate name of a settlement formed by Φῆρες.
Having proceeded thus far, we may now observe the relation of the word Φὴρ,
1. To the Greek ἔρα, which evidently, from its passing into the Latin terra, had at one time a Greek prefix. With this we may probably associate the Greek ἔαρ, and the Latin ver.
2. To the Greek θὴρ, a wild beast.
3. To the Latin fera, with the same meaning.
4. To the Latin terra, meaning the earth.
5. To the Italian terra, the old classical name, in that beautiful tongue, not for a district, but for an inclosed, walled, or fortified place. This word seems in Italian to be rarely, if at all, used for a district, but so generally for a town, that it is difficult to suppose the signification was derived in the same manner as Argos in Greek, from the tract of country in which it was situated. In Italian terra seems often to mean tellus, often humus, very rarely ager, constantly oppidum or castrum. Thus in Dante (Inferno, C., v. 97), ‘Siede la terra, dove nata fui.’
This being so, it is natural to suppose that, while the correlative of the Greek ἔρα became in Latin terra, so as directly to signify tellus or humus, that of the Greek Φηρὰ became in Italian terra, so as to signify a walled place; or, in other words, that the original word, whatever it was, of the common mother language, which became Φηρὰ in Greek, in Italy became terra for this latter purpose. The exchange of θ for t we see in ἐσθὴς becoming vestis: and of t for f (= φ) in τρυγάω compared with fruges.
This sense of terra seems to have dropped altogether out of the Latin, and especially Pelasgian, branch of the old Italian tongue.