He became Ötzi — a name derived from the Ötztal valley in whose mountains he had lain. The name stuck in the popular and scientific literature alike, though formal references sometimes use the Tyrolean Iceman.
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## The Border Dispute That Shaped His Fate
A detail that might seem administrative turned out to have lasting scientific and political consequences: the question of which country Ötzi belonged to.
The Ötztal Alps straddle the Austria-Italy border, and the precise location of that border in the high mountains has historically been defined by watershed lines — the ridgelines from which precipitation flows either north toward Austria or south toward Italy. When a surveying team went to the site in October 1991 to establish exactly where the body had been found, they determined that the gully lay 92.56 meters inside Italian territory.
The 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye had established the watershed-based border, but a retreating glacier had shifted the actual ice surface since the survey that set the border markings, pulling some markers to a position that did not reflect the true watershed. The mummy had been found on the Italian side.
South Tyrol — the northern Italian province where the site sits, a predominantly German-speaking region with significant cultural and historical ties to Austria — claimed property rights over the find. After protracted negotiations, the Province of Bolzano/South Tyrol retained custody. The mummy remained in Innsbruck for scientific examination for several years, but in 1998 it was transferred to the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, where it has been housed ever since — displayed in a custom cold chamber through a small window, maintained at temperature and humidity conditions close to those of the glacier that preserved it.