# Romance names of cardinal directions from Germanic



## ahvalj

Is there a plausible explanation why Romance languages (including Romanian, i. e. pretty early) have borrowed the Germanic words for the cardinal directions (north/east/south/west)?


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## CyrusSH

What are these words? Exactly north, ...?


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## Olaszinhok

Italian: Nord, Sud, Est, Ovest = north, south, east, west
Spanish: Norte, Sur, Este, Oeste


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## berndf

All dictionaries I have looked at agree that it was a Old English loan into French and spread from there around the 15th century into other Romance languages, Pianigiani adds for Italian: _mediante i rapporti commerciali_.


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## Olaszinhok

The Italian names of the cardinal directions  are actually very similar to the French ones and strangely enough they were not Italinized. I am wondering why?!
French: Nord, Sud, Est Ouest.

Here is a link with some information about their etymology:
The Italian names of the cardinal directions | Learn Italian Daily


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## fdb

The French words for the cardinal points (nord, sud, est, ouest) are definitely borrowed from some Germanic language, presumably in connection with seafaring in the North Sea. The supposition that they were borrowed specifically from Old English (and not, for example, from the Normans) is supported by the observation that French est has an /e/ vowel, like English and Frisian, while all the other Germanic languages have /o/ or /u/. The vowel in English “east” is explained by the assumption of a contamination with suffixed words like “easter”, with Germanic umlaut.

From a phonological point of view, nord, sud, ouest could theoretically derive from Nordic or any other Germanic language, but there is an argument for thinking that all four terms were borrowed from a common source all at the same time.

The forms in other Romance languages, as mentioned, are borrowed from French, in the case of Romanian in the fairly recent past.


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## bearded

berndf said:


> All dictionaries I have looked at agree that it was a Old English loan into French and spread from there around the 15th century into other Romance languages, Pianigiani adds for Italian: _mediante i rapporti commerciali_.


I would add that the success of those Anglo-French terms was also due - in Italy at least - to the fact that they are much shorter and easier  than the relevant local 'classic' words  (Nord/tramontana, Sud/mezzogiorno, Est/levante, Ovest/occidente).


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## Olaszinhok

bearded said:


> 'classic' words (Nord/tramontana,



Hello Bearded
Could you please explain to me why you've matched Nord with tramontana and not settentrione? As far as I know tramontana is a cold wind blowing from the North... Am I missing something?
Thank you in advance


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## bearded

Hello Olaszinhok
You are right: the most common 'classic' word for North is ''settentrione'' (Latin 'septem triones' from the name of a northern constellation).  It simply did not occur to me when I wrote my #7.  However please note that ''tramontana'' was/is  also often used as a name of the North direction, not only of the wind. It's of course a rather old usage (see here at no.2:  tramontana significato - Cerca con Google), and the expression  _vento di tramontana _literally means 'wind of the North' (coming from the North direction).
Also, for 'east' I have written ''levante'', but ''oriente'' is a very common word, too.


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## ahvalj

Thanks. Yes, I should have thought that _est(e)_ implies an English/Frisian source, so the loan must have been more recent. Yet what could be the psychological motives of this strange replacement? OK, in north of France these words could have spread as slang expressions, and Romanian could have acquired them in the second half of the 19th century during the westernization of that language, but why did other Romance languages _replace_ their own words for such everyday concepts? Especially Italian that indeed has even not adapted them to its phonetics and morphology. _Occidente/oriente_ are not worse in any sense than _ovest/est._


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## berndf

If you look at the medieval Italian terms Bearded quoted, three of the four cardinal directions had already been replaced before, compared to Latin. In the Romance world there was a zoo of different expressions. Consistency may have been an important reason.


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## CyrusSH

I was referring to the words in Romance languages not Germanic, for those who live in Spain and Romania "western" and "eastern" lands were different, so they couldn't use the same words.


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## berndf

Cardinal directions are almost universally defined in relation to the sun and/or to stars. As long as you are on the northern hemisphere between the tropic and the polar circle the exact geographical location does not matter.


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## caelum

Rome was sacked by Germanic tribes, as well as what is now France and Spain, so could it not be possible that after the fall of Rome, people had already stopped using the Latin directions and had started replacing them with the Germanic equivalents? Or they had forgotten the directions altogether and they had to be reitroduced later with contact with Germanic peoples. I also wonder why occident and orient are still very common in the romance languages but the Latin equivalents for nord and sud are not.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Cardinal directions are almost universally defined in relation to the sun and/or to stars. As long as you are on the northern hemisphere between the tropic and the polar circle the exact geographical location does not matter.



Yes but the problem is that these directions were also used as place names, for example in Persian Khorasan (_xwar-asan_ "sunrise") means "east" but for Persians who lived in the east of Khorasan, it should be actually Khavaran (_xwar-waran_ "sunset") which means "west", in Modern Persian _khavar_ is used for "east" which is clearly wrong. For this reason the best thing that we can do is to use Arabic words _sharq_ and _qarb_ for "east" and "west".

I think there was the same problem about Romance languages, for example _mezzogiorno_ is also a place name.


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## berndf

That could have contributed in some Romance languages but could hardly be decisive. Mezzogiorno in Italian and Midi in French are already replacement terms. The replacement of _australis_ for _south(ward) _is probably more convincingly explained by the clash with the Germanic root _austr- = east_, in Italy and Spain with Gothic and in France with Frankish.


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## danielstan

Regarding Romanian I confirm that the terms Nord/Sud/Est/Vest are neologisms, most probably imported from French (or German) in XIX century.
The historical Romanian names for these cardinal points are:
nord = '_miazănoapte_' < Lat. _mediam noctem_
sud = '_miazăzi_' < Lat. _mediam diem_
est = '_răsărit_' (literally meaning 'rise' in the context of 'sunrise') < past participle of a reconstructed Lat. *_resalire_
vest = '_apus_' (literally meaning 'set' in the context of 'sunset') < past participle of Lat. _apponere_

These names are rarely used today and may have some poetic connotation, while the 'international' ones are preferred.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> The replacement of _australis_ for _south(ward) _is probably more convincingly explained by the clash with the Germanic root _austr- = east_, in Italy and Spain with Gothic and in France with Frankish.



I think in this clash the Latin word should win because this concept was expanded so wide that Australia is considered as southern land but the Germanic word for east doesn't go further than Austria.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> I think in this clash the Latin word should win because this concept was expanded so wide that Australia is considered as southern land but the Germanic word for east doesn't go further than Austria.


I am not quite sure. Was that a joke?


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## Olaszinhok

As far as Italian is concerned the most common Latin-based words for _Nord, Sud, Est, Ovest _are:_ settentrione, meridione, oriente (levante) _and_ occidente (ponente)._ _ Meridione _can also be a place name_, _a synonym of _mezzogiorno. _As Bearded pointed out  in one of his previous posts,_ Tramontana_ and _Mezzogiorno_  can also be used as cardinal directions  but they sound a bit literary or old-fashioned, at least to my ears.


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## ahvalj

I would reformulate my question. Imagine you're an Italian or Spaniard or Portuguese of the 13–14th centuries. You have your words for "north", "west", "south" and "east" that everybody around you uses and understands. Suddenly you learn that somewhere in France people say  _est_ where you say _oriente._ Why would you decide to do the same and how would you explain to your less literate compatriots at the market or in the nearby village that this is the new way for things to go, especially considering that _est_ sounds so non-Italian and _este_ is homonymous with the Spanish/Portuguese word for "this"?


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## bearded

Hi ahvalj
I don't think that the adoption of the new terms happened ''all of a sudden'', but rather that it was a long process. It probably lasted some decades or even longer until the new, shorter and foreign terms were used.  And please note that the traditional terms are still alive - alongside with the more recent ones (so it was not a real 'replacement'). I think the 'French' words became fashionable little by little, and were most probably introduced by merchants (who had frequent contacts with foreigners), as berndf has written in #4 above.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> I am not quite sure. Was that a joke?



It really sounds as a Joke that in 19th century an English navigator (Matthew Flinders) proposed this ancient Latin name for the land which was known as New Holland. But the important point is that ancient Romans didn't call the southern part of their empire as Australis, in fact it was the name of an unknown land in the remote south, I think it shows they had better imaginations about directions than other ones.


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## Nino83

I agree with bearded. Probably they were both used for long time. The Germanic terms have not entirely replaced the Latin ones.
And for adjectives, only the Latin ones are used. _Settentrionale, meriodionale, orientale, occidentale_.
There are no words like _*nordale, *sudale, *estale, *ovestale_.


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## bearded

Nino83 said:


> There are no words like _*nordale_


Actually, there is _nordico._


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## CyrusSH

bearded said:


> Hi ahvalj
> I don't think that the adoption of the new terms happened ''all of a sudden'', but rather that it was a long process. It probably lasted some decades or even longer until the new, shorter and foreign terms were used.  And please note that the traditional terms are still alive - alongside with the more recent ones. I think the 'French' words became fashionable little by little, and were most probably introduced by merchants (who had frequent contacts with foreigners), as berndf has written in #4 above.



What are the usages of traditional terms? I think they are used for specified geographical locations.


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## berndf

bearded said:


> Hi ahvalj
> I don't think that the adoption of the new terms happened ''all of a sudden'', but rather that it was a long process. It probably lasted some decades or even longer until the new, shorter and foreign terms were used.  And please note that the traditional terms are still alive - alongside with the more recent ones. I think the 'French' words became fashionable little by little, and were most probably introduced by merchants (who had frequent contacts with foreigners), as berndf has written in #4 above.


Yes, that is my understanding. Maritime vocabulary probably played a role in this.



ahvalj said:


> Imagine you're an Italian or Spaniard or Portuguese of the 13–14th centuries.


More like 15th-16th centuries.


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## Nino83

bearded said:


> nordico.


Right.  A curious exception.


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## bearded

CyrusSH said:


> I think they are used for specified geographical locations.


Not quite. If we say e.g. _il settentrione, _it can be the North of Italy or more vaguely ''northern parts/lands..'' And _settentrionale _means ''northern''.
The same is valid for the other directions as well.


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## Cossue

I agree with nautical vocabulary having a large role: in Medieval Galician many nautical terms appear to have been taken directly from Old French or from English or Dutch, probably thanks to Galicia being inserted in the North Sea merchant routes from the 12th century on; much of that vocabulary is still alive today. In particular norte ( < North) is attested in the 14th century, and composites as nordés ( < North-East) are attested in the 15th century with modern spelling and adapted to our phonetics.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> What are the usages of traditional terms? I think they are used for specified geographical locations.


You obsession to reduce this discussion to toponyms is another fruit from your red herring tree, as @Treaty would phrase it. Cardinal directions are indeed sometimes used in toponyms but that is not their determining function.


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## Olaszinhok

Nino83 said:


> There are no words like _*nordale, *sudale, *estale, *ovestale_.



Unlike Spanish, where there are_ norteño,  sureño. _


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> I would reformulate my question. Imagine you're an Italian or Spaniard or Portuguese of the 13–14th centuries. You have your words for "north", "west", "south" and "east" that everybody around you uses and understands. Suddenly you learn that somewhere in France people say  _est_ where you say _oriente._ Why would you decide to do the same and how would you explain to your less literate compatriots at the market or in the nearby village that this is the new way for things to go, especially considering that _est_ sounds so non-Italian and _este_ is homonymous with the Spanish/Portuguese word for "this"?



Obviously it is difficult to say why languages develop semantically in a particular way. But I could imagine that this has something to do with the introduction of the compass in Europe. Before that, east was where the sun rises and west was where it sets. The compass allows a more precise definition of the cardinal directions; the “east” is a more precise place than the “orient”. It is worth mentioning that the earliest European reference to the compass is at the end of the 11th century, and this is specifically with reference to seafaring in the English Channel.


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## Olaszinhok

fdb said:


> But I could imagine that this has something to do with the introduction of the compass in Europe. Before that, east was where the sun rises and west was where it sets



This is plausible!


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> You obsession to reduce this discussion to toponyms is another fruit from your red herring tree, as @Treaty would phrase it. Cardinal directions are indeed sometimes used in toponyms but that is not their determining function.



First please change your attitude against me, you shouldn't be disagree with me in all discussions, I have no obsession, what we know today about cardinal directions differ from what our ancestors knew about them, they just knew that a region is in the north or the east, so they called it northern or eastern land.


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## ahvalj

Olaszinhok said:


> This is plausible!


Yes, that may be true (e. g. the Russian seamen use Dutch words in these cases: _норд/вест/зюйд/ост — noord/west/zuid/oost_). Yet I still can't imagine the way this has spread to the speech of laypeople. Perhaps there is no answer indeed, but this case of lexical replacement looks rather deviant.


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## Stoggler

Olaszinhok said:


> Unlike Spanish, where there are_ norteño,  sureño. _



Is there a difference in usage in Spanish between norteño and septentrional?  Is it a style/level of formality difference?


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> First please change your attitude against me, you shouldn't be disagree with me in all discussions, I have no obsession, what we know today about cardinal directions differ from what our ancestors knew about them, they just knew that a region is in the north or the east, so they called it northern or eastern land.


Then I suggest you stop trying to hijack discussions by pulling them into fringe aspects of the topic.


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## apmoy70

Olaszinhok said:


> As far as Italian is concerned the most common Latin-based words for _Nord, Sud, Est, Ovest _are:_ settentrione, meridione, oriente (levante) _and_ occidente (ponente)._ _ Meridione _can also be a place name_, _a synonym of _mezzogiorno. _As Bearded pointed out  in one of his previous posts,_ Tramontana_ and _Mezzogiorno_  can also be used as cardinal directions  but they sound a bit literary or old-fashioned, at least to my ears.


Interestingly enough, some of these names are part of the Greek nautical  jargon!
The names of the cardinal directions remain stubbornly Greek, while the names of the winds blowing from the compass points are clearly Romance, either Genoese or Venetian (mostly Venetian).
Thus, the northerly wind is *<<Τραμουντάνα>>* [tramun'dana] (fem.) < Ven. Tramontana.
The southerly wind is *<<Όστρια>>* ['ostri.a] (fem.) < Ven. Ostria.
The easterly wind is *<<Λεβάντες>>* [le'vandes] (masc.) < Ven. Levante.
The westerly wind is *<<Πουνέντες>>* [pu'nendes] (masc.) < Ven. Punente.

Even the winds blowing from the intermediate compass points, are Romance:
The southwesterly wind is *<<Γαρμπής>>* [γar'bis] (masc.) < Ven. Garbin.
The southeasterly wind is *<<Σoρόκος>>* [so'rokos] (masc.) < Ven. Scirocco.
The northwesterly wind is *<<Μαΐστρος>>* [ma'istros] (masc.) < Ven. Maistro. 
Finally, the northeasterly wind is *<<Γρέγος>>* & *<<Γραίγος>>* (both spellings are used) ['γreγos] (masc.) < Ven. Grego (the wind blowing from the direction of Greece).

Two hundred years of co-exist with the two mediaeval maritime superpowers in the Mediterranean, have left their mark.


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## Cenzontle

Stoggler (#37):


> Is there a difference in usage in Spanish between norteño and septentrional? Is it a style/level of formality difference?


I was about to answer "Yes, 'septentrional' is so formal as to be hardly ever spoken"—
but I was surprised to find (in the Google Ngram Viewer) that (in published books) "norteño, -a" is virtually a 20th-century innovation,
_and has not yet caught up to "septentrional" in frequency of use!_  (I'll repeat: the Viewer is based on books, not speech.)
Likewise "sureño, -a", less frequent than either "meridional" or even "austral".


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## Olaszinhok

Stoggler said:


> Is there a difference in usage in Spanish between norteño and septentrional? Is it a style/level of formality difference?



I basically agree with Cenzontle but I'm not a native speaker. I personally reckon that _norteño _is much more colloquial than _septentrional.
_
Check out the translation for "norteño" on SpanishDict!



apmoy70 said:


> Two hundred years of co-exist with the two mediaeval maritime superpowers in the Mediterranean, have left their mark.



All those Venetian-based wind names  are astonishing, indeed. As for Venice, I would say that its power in the Mediterranean sea lasted  more than just two centuries, even on a few Greek Islands.

Republic of Venice - New World Encyclopedia


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## Delvo

What other Germanic seafaring-related words did those languages also absorb in the same era?


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## OBrasilo

ahvalj said:
			
		

> and _este_ is homonymous with the Spanish/Portuguese word for "this"?


The confusion is only in Spanish, in Portuguese and Galician, east is _leste_, so there's no confusion.


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## Gavril

Were the cardinal directions really everyday concepts for most people in past centuries, when it was common to stay in the same town (or other small region) for one's entire life, and most people didn't read maps?

Maybe the idea of north/south/etc. would come up occasionally for most people (perhaps more frequently depending on local geography), but the terms used for these concepts seem relatively susceptible to influence from a limited class of people (traders, seafarers, etc.) who would have used these terms on a more day-to-day basis.

It might also be relevant that many of the non-Germanic terms for "north"/"south"/etc. in Romance look like reimportations from Latin (_settentrionale, occidentale_, etc.), rather than words that have undergone all the relevant Latin>Romance sound changes. I'm not sure what the "popular" counterparts of some of these reimported words would have been (e.g. did Spanish have **_oceente_ alongside _occidente_?), but if there was a long period where these two alternatives coexisted, this could have made it easier to adopt a third set of alternatives (= Germanic) for directional terminology as well.


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## Penyafort

In *Catalan*, the words for the cardinal points (*nord*, *sud*, *est*, *oest*) are modern (18th/19th c.) loanwords from French.

The traditional forms in Catalan are those which were also used for the winds. Quite logical, as they were certainly important for a medieval seafaring society.

These words, already used by the first writers (13th c.), are:

*· tramuntana  *(< TRANSMONTANA, 'from beyond the mountains', used for the wind and the polar star)
*· migjorn  *(< MEDIO DIURNO < MEDIO DIE, vulgar for MERIDIES, 'midday, south')
*· llevant *(< LEVANTE sole, 'rising sun')
*· ponent *(< PONENTE sole, 'setting sun')​
They are still the names for the winds. The last two are still used for the cardinal points too, specially in compound forms or in literature.

All of these forms come from Latin, as well as those for the other Northern winds: *mestral *(< MAGISTRALE ''masterly") for the North-West, and* gregal *(< GRAECALE? "Greek wind") for the North-East. The southern winds have Arabic names instead: _*garbí *_for the South-West (from the Arabic word for 'western') and _*xaloc *_for the South-East (from a Romanized form of the Arabic word for the sunrise; the English _Sirocco_)

Obviously, the educated forms* septentrió *(*septentrional*), *meridional*, *occident*(*al*) and *orient*(*al*) have also co-existed.


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## Cenzontle

I think the most interesting question in this thread was raised by Gavril (#44):


> Were the cardinal directions really everyday concepts for most people in past centuries, when it was common to stay in the same town (or other small region) for one's entire life, and most people didn't read maps?


It seems the cardinal directions came into their own with the first ocean voyages on the featureless surface of the sea.
Meanwhile landlubbers had access to geographic features—hills, rivers, forests, etc.—when giving directions to get to a place or saying where a wind came from.


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## heterônimo

It's important to mention that _Tramontana_, _Levant_, _Mistral_, etc. are traditional names of the Mediterranean Winds, as apmoy said the terms probably spread troughout the Mediterranean world with Italian seafaring culture.

Shall we assume that north, south, east and west were the traditional terms used by Atlantic sailors then? Portuguese _leste _is clearly a direct borrow from French, it even kept the article.


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## ahvalj

Cenzontle said:


> I think the most interesting question in this thread was raised by Gavril (#44):
> 
> It seems the cardinal directions came into their own with the first ocean voyages on the featureless surface of the sea.
> Meanwhile landlubbers had access to geographic features—hills, rivers, forests, etc.—when giving directions to get to a place or saying where a wind came from.


This argumentation is OK when we stay on the Romance ground, but the Germanic languages have the same four words unaltered throughout all their attested history. Baltic and Slavic use words like "evening" or "sunset" for the directions, in addition to the word for "north", which is inherited from Proto-Indo-European.


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## Gavril

I think the persistence of the Germanic directional terminology in particular might have something to do with the monosylabicity of all four stems, and the rhyming codas (_nor*th*_/_sou*th*_, _ea*st*_/_we*st*_) that make them easier to remember. That is another factor that could explain their adoption in Romance, where many of the older terms seem to have been multisyllabic.


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## heterônimo

The compass was introduced in Europe around the 13th century, before that sailors used the stars to navigate and common people would simply use the sun - that's probably the reason why we can trace the etymology of all east/west terms to sunrise/sunset and the origin of north/south terms are often more confusing everywhere around the globe. I don't think that we can find a reasonable pattern in the use of north/south terms that goes beyond the middle ages.


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## ilocas2

Cenzontle said:


> I think the most interesting question in this thread was raised by Gavril (#44):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Were the cardinal directions really everyday concepts for most people in past centuries, when it was common to stay in the same town (or other small region) for one's entire life, and most people didn't read maps?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It seems the cardinal directions came into their own with the first ocean voyages on the featureless surface of the sea.
> Meanwhile landlubbers had access to geographic features—hills, rivers, forests, etc.—when giving directions to get to a place or saying where a wind came from.
Click to expand...




heterônimo said:


> The compass was introduced in Europe around the 13th century, before that sailors used the stars to navigate and common people would simply use the sun - that's probably the reason why we can trace the etymology of all east/west terms to sunrise/sunset and the origin of north/south terms are often more confusing everywhere around the globe. I don't think that we can find a reasonable pattern in the use of north/south terms that goes beyond the middle ages.



Generally, people often underestimate the life in the past, in every aspect.


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## Quiviscumque

OBrasilo said:


> The confusion is only in Spanish, in Portuguese and Galician, east is _leste_, so there's no confusion.



Also in Spanish _leste_ until 18th century.


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## Quiviscumque

Cenzontle said:


> I think the most interesting question in this thread was raised by Gavril (#44):
> 
> It seems the cardinal directions came into their own with the first ocean voyages on the featureless surface of the sea.
> Meanwhile landlubbers had access to geographic features—hills, rivers, forests, etc.—when giving directions to get to a place or saying where a wind came from.



I think _norte-sud-leste-ueste_ were introduced in Spanish as technical words by oceanic sailors. Corominas cites Colon's letters as their first attestation (and CORDE shows also occurrences in Magellan's blog). So I guess (_pace_ Corominas) that in Spanish they are  loanworks from Portuguese.

Note that "ordinary people" had been always aware of the concept: _levante, poniente, mediodía_ are patrimonial words and _oriente, occidente, trasmontana, setentrión_ were also used.


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## Cossue

Quiviscumque said:


> I think _norte-sud-leste-ueste_ were introduced in Spanish as technical words by oceanic sailors. Corominas cites Colon's letters as their first attestation (and CORDE shows also occurrences in Magellan's blog). So I guess (_pace_ Corominas) that in Spanish they are loanworks from Portuguese.



The word _sur _"south" is already attested in the Galician _Cantigas de Santa María_ (13th century) of Alfonso X:
"E fez as outras galeas
aquele *vento de sur*
alongar enton tan muito
que as non viron nenllur"​
And _norte _in the Galician cantigas of the Castilian author Alfonso Álvarez de Villasandino (14th century):
"Coraçon triste, ben vejo
que buscades minna morte,
pois pensades tan sobejo
en linda *estrella de norte"*​
So, I agree: Castilian Spanish probably acquired these words via Portuguese or rather Galician (Colon's _Santa María_ was also named 'La Gallega',_ the Galician_).


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## apmoy70

ilocas2 said:


> Generally, people often underestimate the life in the past, in every aspect.


Indeed, I don't want to be either pedantic or off topic, but the Greeks already in the archaic period had names for the cardinal points, defined by astral phenomena, for instance the North was* <<Ἄρκτος>> Árktos *(fem.)  after the constellation of _Ursa Major_  (from PIE *h₂ŕ̥tḱos, _bear_)


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## heterônimo

apmoy70 said:


> Indeed, I don't want to be either pedantic or off topic, but the Greeks already in the archaic period had names for the cardinal points, defined by astral phenomena, for instance the North was* <<Ἄρκτος>> Árktos *(fem.)  after the constellation of _Ursa Major_  (from PIE *h₂ŕ̥tḱos, _bear_)



Indeed, similarly _Septentrio _is the Latin name for Ursa Major *or *Ursa Minor. However, even though using the location of the North Star (Polaris) is, by far, the most obvious way to find north without any equipment (and probably the only realiable one before the compass), the association of the North Star, Ursa Major, etc. with the term "north" in the languages of the northern hemisphere isn't seen in the same frequency that we see the sunset/sunrise-east/west association, which is intuitive for everyone on this planet.


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## jmx

Stoggler said:


> Is there a difference in usage in Spanish between norteño and septentrional?  Is it a style/level of formality difference?


I'd say both are rather uncommon. Most of the time we just say "del norte, del sur". In addition, "septentrional" is a loanword from Latin (_cultismo_), as the 'p' in syllabic coda makes obvious.


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## Olaszinhok

jmx said:


> I'd say both are rather uncommon. Most of the time we just say "del norte, del sur". In addition, "septentrional" is a loanword from Latin (_cultismo_), as the 'p' in syllabic coda makes obvious.



_Norteño_ and _sureño_ are more common in some South American countries.


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## Dymn

Gavril said:


> that make them easier to remember.


I know sample n = 1 is not good enough but I always have to stop two seconds to think which is "west" and which is "east", especially in Catalan and Spanish since they are more similar. I don't know any other opposite pair that confuses me.


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## Red Arrow

Dymn said:


> I know sample n = 1 is not good enough but I always have to stop two seconds to think which is "west" and which is "east", especially in Catalan and Spanish since they are more similar. I don't know any other opposite pair that confuses me.


Look at a world map. America is the West, Asia is the East. Clockwise: North, East, South, West.


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## Gavril

Cenzontle said:


> I think the most interesting question in this thread was raised by Gavril (#44):
> 
> It seems the cardinal directions came into their own with the first ocean voyages on the featureless surface of the sea.
> 
> Meanwhile landlubbers had access to geographic features—hills, rivers, forests, etc.—when giving directions to get to a place or saying where a wind came from.



Actually, I was wondering how often people in olden times needed this information to begin with. I.e., when would the average villager (in non-nomadic cultures), whose life did not involve trade/navigation/etc., have needed to travel far enough away from his dwelling place that the concept of cardinal directions would become useful?

I'm not saying that the need would never come up: most people would probably at least have heard of the cardinal directions at some point. However, if the navigation-oriented classes (seamen, traders, etc.) began to adopt new vocabulary for the cardinal directions – which is what seems to have happened with Romance –, then I wouldn't expect there to be much resistance to the adoption of this new vocabulary among the rest of a nation's population.


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## berndf

Red Arrow :D said:


> Clockwise: North, East, South, West.


Norte, Éste, Sur, Oeste

Where is the logic?


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## Red Arrow

berndf said:


> Norte, Éste, Sur, Oeste
> 
> Where is the logic?


There is no logic (at least no more logical than the names of the days of the week, for instance), but isn't it common knowledge that America is "the West" and Asia "the East"?


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## berndf

Red Arrow :D said:


> There is no logic (at least no more logical than the names of the days of the week, for instance), but isn't it common knowledge that America is "the West" and Asia "the East"?


And how would that knowledge help you if the words are almost undistinguishable? I find it astonishing that words that are so easily confused as Éste and Oeste replaced much better distinguishable words. Especially in seafaring where you have to shout commands in very noisy environments. In English maritime language, e.g., _larboard_ was replaced by _port_ because _larboard_ and _starboard_ were so close ponetically and that was simply impracticable.


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## Dymn

Red Arrow :D said:


> Look at a world map. America is the West, Asia is the East. Clockwise: North, East, South, West.


That's one of the tricks I use: "Far West: America: Left", but it's tedious to stop to think it every time I see these words.


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## Red Arrow

berndf said:


> And how would that knowledge help you if the words are almost undistinguishable? I find it astonishing that words that are so easily confused as Éste and Oeste replaced much better distinguishable words. Especially in seafaring where you have to shout commands in very noisy environments. In English maritime language, e.g., _larboard_ was replaced by _port_ because _larboard_ and _starboard_ were so close ponetically and that was simply impracticable.


I don't see why Éste and Oeste are less distinguishable than Est and Ouest, which are both easily distinguished, at least where I live.

I don't think the confusion has got anything to do with phonology, unless Spanish and Portuguese people drop or reduce the o.

EDIT: There is a Brazilian on Forvo who pronounces Oeste with a W.
Uitspraak van oeste: Hoe wordt oeste uitgesproken in het Spaans, Portugees, Duits (ricnester)

It is a bit funny how the page also has the German word oeste, which means Eastern. (öste)


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## berndf

Red Arrow :D said:


> Est and Ouest, which are both easily distinguished


Not really. It is at least as easily misheard as _starboard_ and _larboard_.


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## Olaszinhok

As for Italian, _Est_ and _*O*vest (with an open* o*) _are clearly distinguishable: never do I mix them up.


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## heterônimo

berndf said:


> And how would that knowledge help you if the words are almost undistinguishable? I find it astonishing that words that are so easily confused as Éste and Oeste replaced much better distinguishable words. Especially in seafaring where you have to shout commands in very noisy environments. In English maritime language, e.g., _larboard_ was replaced by _port_ because _larboard_ and _starboard_ were so close ponetically and that was simply impracticable.



Similarly, in Brazilian Portuguese _estibordo _was replaced by _boreste _(_bordo+este?_) to make it more audible to sailors, the problem is that when someone is screaming in a noisy environment we tend to focus on the stressed syllable - _bombordo, estibordo_. 

As for _leste/oeste_ in Portuguese, I personally think that the presence of the L makes both terms very distinguishable.


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