Where does the word volcano come from Where does the word volcano come from? The term volcano is an ancient one. To answer your question, I turn to a book, Volcanoes: Fire from the Earth, written by Maurice Krafft. In his book, Krafft talks about how the Romans believed in Vulcan, the god of fire. The place where they believed he lived was inside the earth beneath the island Hiera. It is now called Vulcano and the word is used when referring to any of the active volcanoes around the world. Of course, different languages have different words for volcano. For example, in Japanese it is kazan, while in Indonesian it is gunung api, and in Spanish it is volcan. http://teacher.scholastic.com/researchtools/articlearchives/volcanoes/general.htm