"Ausones" (Ancient Greek: Αὔσονες; Italian: Ausoni), the original name and the extant Greek form for the Latin "Aurunci", was a name applied by Greek writers to describe various Italic peoples inhabiting the southern and central regions of Italy. The term was used, specifically, to denote the particular tribe which Livy termed the Aurunci, but later it was applied to all Italians, and Ausonia became a poetic term, in Greek and Latin, for Italy itself.

The usage, by ancient writers, in regard to national appellations is very vague and fluctuating, perhaps in no instance more so than in the case of the Ausones or Ausonians.

Originally "Aurunci" was the appellation given by the Romans to the people called "Ausones" by the Greeks: Indeed, the two names are merely different forms of the same, as around the 4th century BCE, Latin medial "s" (at this point representing [z]) shifted to “r” (pronounced [r]). (Aurunci = Auronici = Auruni = Ausuni). The identity of the two is distinctly asserted by Servius, and clearly implied by Cassius Dio, where he says that the name of Ausonia was properly applied only to the land of the Auruncans, between the Volscians and the Campanians. Nevertheless, it does not appear that the name "Aurunci" was ever employed by the Romans in the vague and extensive sense in which that of "Ausones" was used by the Greeks.

Further, it seems, by the later period of the fourth century BC, that the Romans came to distinguish the two names as applying to two separate political tribes of the same race. Evidently two parts of one people, both dwelling on the frontiers of Latium and Campania. For more details on this see Aurunci.

It is possible the Ausonians may have also been identical with the Oscans (Opicans), as they were occasionally referred to by the same name. Aristotle expressly states that the part of Italy towards Tyrrhenia was inhabited by the Opicans, "who were called, both formerly and in his time, by the additional name of Ausones". Antiochus of Syracuse stated, that Campania was at first occupied by the Opicans, "who were also called Ausonians". Hecataeus also seems to have had the same opinion as Antiochus, as he termed Nola in Campania "a city of the Ausones ".

Polybius, on the contrary, regarded the two nations as different, and spoke of Campania as inhabited by the Ausonians and Opicans. This does not necessarily prove that they were really distinct, as some authors mention the Opicans and Oscans as if they were two different nations when they are clearly the same.

However, the use of "Ausones" as identical with that of the Opicans may simply be due to the fact "Ausones" was used as a vague term for all inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, as stated above.

Indeed, it is probable that the Greeks frequently applied the name with little regard to accuracy, and may have included races widely different under the common appellation of Ausonians, but it is impossible to account for this vague and general use of the name, unless the people to whom it referred shared many attributes and formed an important part of the population of central Italy. The precise relation in which they were considered as having to the Opicans or Oscans it is impossible to determine, nor perhaps were the ideas of the Greeks themselves about this very clear and definite. The passages already cited prove that they were considered as occupying the western coast of Campania, on which account the Lower Sea (Mare Inferum, as it was termed by the Romans), known subsequently as the Tyrrhenian Sea, was in early ages commonly termed by the Greeks the Ausonian Sea. Other accounts, however, represent them as originally an inland people, dwelling in the mountains about Beneventum. Scymnus Chius also writes of them as occupying an inland region; and Strabo states that they had occupied the mountain tract above the Pontine marshes, and in Roman history only with Volscians.