Australia

Abraham Ortelius’s world map, 1570, depicting a vast southern continent labeled Terra australis nondum cognita (Southern land not yet known)

14 February 2024

The continent of Australia gets its name, appropriately enough, from the Latin australis, meaning southern. And the name Terra australis incognita (unknown southern land) has been applied to hypothetical southern continents since antiquity. There is no all-encompassing Indigenous name for the continent; instead there is a wide variety of local names for its different regions.

The first European to visit the continent we know today as Australia was Willem Janszoon in 1606. He dubbed the land Nieu Zelant, after the Dutch province of Zeeland, but the name was not generally adopted. The name New Zealand was later applied to Aotearoa by European settler-colonists of those islands. A second Dutch explorer, Dirck Hartog, landed on the continent in 1616. He called the land Eendrachtsland, after his ship, the Eendracht (Unity or Concord), but again the name did not catch on.

A third Dutchman, Abel Tasman, was the first to give the continent a lasting name. He made two voyages to the South Seas for the Dutch East India Company, in 1642–43 and again in 1644. On this second expedition he named the continent Nieuw-Holland (New Holland), a name that lasted for some while. The island of Tasmania is named after him. (Tasman had dubbed that island Van Diemen’s Land, after Antonio Van Diemen, governor-general of the Dutch East Indies.)

The name Australia was first applied to the continent in an English translation of a work by Gabriel de Foigny. De Foigny, under the pseudonym Jacques Sadeur, published two books about the continent. The first was the 1676 La Terre australe connue (The Southern Lands, Known). The preface to the second book in 1692, Les avantures de Jacques Sadeur dans la découverte et le voyage de la terre austral (The Adventures of Jacques Sadeur in the Discovery of and Voyage to the Southern Land), contains this passage:

Il est encore vrai qu’en comparant la Description que nous a fait de la Terre Australe Fernandes de Quir, Portugais, avec celle qu’on va lire, on est oblige d’avoüer qu’il saut qu’il en ait découvert quelque chose: Car nous lisons en sa huiriéme Requeste au Roi d’Espagne, que dans les découvertes qu’il sit l’an 1610, de la Terre Australe, il trouva un Païs beaucoup plus fertile & plus people que tous ceux de l’Europe.

While in the original French de Foigny simply called it la terre australe (the southern lands) The English translation of this passage, published in 1693, adds the name Australia:

It is likewise true, that upon comparing the Description that Ferdinando de Quir a Portugal, gives of the Southern Continent, with that which is contained in this Book, it must needs be allowed, that he hath made some Discovery of that Country. For we read in his eighth Request to the King of Spain, that in the Discoveries, which he made in the year 1610, of the Southern Country, called here Australia, he found a Country much more Fertile and Populous than any in Europe.

The passage mentions Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, who commanded a 1605–06 expedition under the Spanish flag, to find Terra australis. While he did map much of the Pacific, he did not find the continent. Although his second-in-command, Luis Váez de Torres sailed almost within sight of it while circumnavigating the island that is now known as New Guinea. The Torres Strait between New Guinea and Australia is named for him.

The name Australia was officially adopted by the British Admiralty as the name for the continent in 1824 following the 1814 publication of Matthew Flinders’s account of his 1802–03 voyage circumnavigating the continent. Flinders was the first to identify Australia as a continent.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020, s.v. Australia, Tasmania. Oxfordreference.com.

de Foigny, Gabriel [Jacques Sadeur, pseud.]. La Terre austral connue. Paris: Jacques Verneuil, 1676. Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Gallica.

———. Les avantures de Jacques Sadeur dans la découverte et le voyage de la terre australe. Paris: Claude Barbin, 1692, sig. a.iiii.verso–a.v.recto. Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Gallica.

———. A New Discovery of Terra Incognita Australis, or the Southern World. London: John Dunton, 1693, n.p. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Life in Australia.” Australian Government, Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2007. Archive.org.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Australian, n. and adj.

“Where Did the Name ‘Australia’ Come From?” National Library of Australia. n.d. (accessed 12 January 2024).

Image credit: Abraham Ortelius, 1570. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

Arctic / Antarctic

Members of Roald Amundsen’s Antarctic expedition at the South Pole, December 1911. From left to right: Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting.

12 February 2024

Artic and Antarctic have pretty straightforward etymologies. The only hiccup is that they are borrowed from both French and Latin—English acquired the words in the late fourteenth century, at a time when the literati were conversant in both French and Latin, so it is impossible to untangle the influences of both. The French, in turn, also developed from Latin, and the Latin is borrowed from Greek. Specifically, the English words come from the Middle French artique / antartique and the Latin arcticus / antarcticus. The Latin is from the Greek ἀρκτικός (arcticos), meaning northern (literally it means bear, after the circumpolar constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) and ἀνταρκτικός (antarcticos), opposite to the north.

In classical antiquity, the celestial north pole was slightly closer to Kolchab (Beta Ursae Minoris) than it was to Polaris (Alpha Ursae Minoris), and therefore in the middle of the constellation due to precession of the earth’s axis of rotation, like the wobbling of a top. The entire constellation, rather than an individual star, was taken by navigators as indicating the north. Since then the celestial pole has been slowly edging closer to Polaris and is now less than one degree from it. (In about 12,000 years, the pole star will be Vega, in the constellation Lyra.)

John Trevisa, in his late fourteenth-century translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things) uses the Latin polus articus and polus antarticus to refer to the north and south celestial poles:

And þis spere gooþ about apon twey poles, þe on þerof is by north and goþ neuer doun to vs, and hatte polus articus, þat is þe northe pole. Þe oþir is polus antarticus, þat is þe souþ polus, and is neuer iseie of vs; and þat is for it is fer fro vs, oþir on case þe erþe is between vs and him.

(And this [heavenly] sphere goes about upon two poles, the one thereof is in the north and never comes down to us, and is called polus articus, that is the north pole. The other is polus antarticus, that is the south polus, and is never seen by us; and that is because it is far from us, also it happens the earth is between us and it.)

In contrast, Geoffrey Chaucer, writing his Treatise on the Astrolabe at about the same time, has anglicized the words:

Understond wel that as fer is the heved of Aries or Libra in the equinoxiall fro oure orisonte as is the cenyth fro the pool artik; and as high is the pool artik fro the orisonte as the equinoxiall is fre fro the cenyth. I prove it thus by the latitude of Oxenford: understond wel that the height of oure pool artik fro oure north orisonte is 51 degrees and 50 mynutes; than is the cenyth fro oure pool artik 38 degres and 10 mynutes.

(Know well that the head of Aries or Libra is as far in the celestial equator from our horizon as is the zenith from the arctic pole; and the arctic pole is as high from the horizon as the celestial equator is from the zenith. I demonstrate it thusly with the latitude of Oxford: know well that the height of our arctic pole from our northern horizon is 51 degrees and 50 minutes; then the zenith is 38 degrees and 10 minutes from our arctic pole.)

And:

Understond wel that the latitude of eny place in the region is verrely the space bytwixe the cenyth of hem that dwellen there and the equinoxiall cercle north or south, taking the mesure of the meridional lyne, as shewith in the almykanteras of then astrelabye. And thilke space is as much as the pool artike is high in that same place from the orisonte. And than is the depressioun of the pool antartik, that is to seyn, than is the pool antartik, bynethe the orisonte the same quantite of space neither more ne lesse.

(Know well that the latitude of any place in the region is truly the space between the zenith of those who dwell there and the celestial equator north or south, taking the measure of the meridian line, as is shown in the circles marked [i.e., the almucantars] on the astrolabe. And that space is as great as the arctic pole is high in that same place from the horizon. And then the depression of the antarctic pole, that is say, the antarctic pole is the same quantity of space beneath the horizon, neither more nor less.)

As seen in these early examples, Arctic and Antarctic started out as postmodifiers, that is they generally followed the noun they were modifying. But by the end of the fifteenth century, they were appearing before the noun.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “Treatise on the Astrolabe.” The Riverside Chaucer, Larry D. Benson, ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987, 2.22, 675 and 2.25, 676.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2012, s.v. Arctic, adj. and n., Antarctic, adj. and n.

Trevisa, John. On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum, vol. 1 of 3. M. C. Seymour, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 8.6, 1.457.

Photo credit: Olav Bjaaland, 1911. Wikipedia. Public domain image.

mercury / quicksilver

Elemental mercury

9 February 2024

Mercury is a chemical element with atomic number 80 and the symbol Hg. It is the only metallic element that is liquid at standard temperature and pressure. (Elemental bromine is also a liquid, but not a metal.) Mercury has a wide variety of uses, ranging from thermometers to fluorescent lighting and dental amalgams, but many of these uses are being replaced by other substances because of the element’s high toxicity. The chemical symbol for mercury is Hg, from the Latin hydrargyrum, which in turn comes from the Greek ύδράργυρος (hydrargyros), or literally liquid silver.

Mercury has been known since antiquity, but the name does not appear in English until the fourteenth century. The older English name for the metal is quicksilver, which dates to the Old English period. It’s found in a mid tenth-century medical text known as Bald’s Leechbook:

Wiþ magan wærce, rudan sæd & cwic seolfor & eced bergen on neaht nestig. Eft gnid on eced & on wæter polleian sele ðrincan sona Þ[æt] sar toglit.

(For strong pain, taste rue seed & quicksilver & vinegar on a fasting night. Afterward, mix pennyroyal herb into vinegar and into water and give to drink; soon that pain glides away.)

The quick in quicksilver is from the older sense of that word meaning alive, having the properties, especially movement and agility, of a living thing. Since mercury is a liquid at room temperature, the movement of drops of the metal gives it the semblance of a something that is alive.

In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, seven of the elemental metals were each associated with a god and with a planet, with mercury associated, of course, with the messenger god and the planet of the same name. We see this association in a variety of alchemical writings, including Chaucer’s The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, one of the earliest appearances of the name mercury in English. Note that Chaucer makes a distinction between the Latinate mercury and the English quicksilver:

I wol yow telle, as was me taught also,
The foure spirites and the bodies sevene,
By ordre, as ofte I herde my lord hem nevene.

The firste spirit quyksilver called is,
The seconde orpyment, the thridde, ywis,
Sal armonyak, and the ferthe brymstoon.
The bodyes sevene eek, lo, hem heere anoon:
Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe,
Mars iren, Mercurie quyksilver we clepe,
Saturnus leed, and Juppiter is tyn,
And Venus coper, by my fader kyn!

(I will tell you, as it was taught also to me,
The four spirits and the seven metals,
In the order as I often heard my lord name them.

The first spirit is called quicksilver,
The second orpiment, the third, indeed,
Sal ammoniac, and the fourth brimstone.
The seven metals also, lo, hear them now:
The Sun is gold, and the Moon we assert silver,
Mars iron, Mercury we call quicksilver,
Saturn lead, and Jupiter is tin,
And Venus copper, by my father’s kin!)

Discuss this post

Sources:

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales. In Larry D. Benson, ed. The Riverside Chaucer, 8.819–29, 273. Also, with minor variation in wording, at Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website.

Cockayne, Oswald. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, vol. 2 of 3. London: Longmans, et al., 1865, 356–57. London, British Library, Royal 12, D xvii. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemcial Elements—Part 1—from Antiquity till the End of 18th Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 1 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09448-5.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2001, s.v. mercury, n.; December 2007, quicksilver, n.

Photo credit: Bionerd, 2008. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

bowl / Super Bowl

NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas just prior to the playing of Super Bowl LI on 5 February 2017

7 February 2024

With every new year comes the onslaught of bowl games: the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the Aloha Bowl, and of course the Super Bowl. Why do we call these gridiron football contests bowls?

The word bowl is an old one, and the most basic meaning of the word has remained unchanged for over a millennium. A bowl is a round vessel for liquids that is wider than it is deep. The word can be found in Old English, such as this example from Ælfric’s Life of St. George, written in the late tenth century:

Athanasius ða ardlice genam ænne mycelne bollan mid bealuwe afylled and deoflum betæhte ðone drenc ealne and sealde him drincan, ac hit him ne derode.

(Athanasius then eagerly took a large bowl filled with poison and dedicated all that drink to the devils and gave it to him to drink, but it did not harm him.)

But what does this have to do with gridiron football?

Bowls are associated with sports because modern stadiums are shaped like bowls. The earliest use of bowl in reference to a stadium that I’m aware of is in the 14 November 1903 issue of the Boston Globe. The article refers to the newly built Harvard stadium:

Although the "bowl" of the stadium for the most part is now covered with temporary wooden seats, the company which has been constructing the stadium has placed more than 10 rows of concrete seats on the iron stringers above the number expected.

Because of their shape, stadiums are often given names that include bowl in the title. The first of these was the Yale Bowl, construction of which began in 1913 and was completed the following year. The name Yale Bowl appears in the Yale Alumni Weekly of 4 April 1913:

THE YALE BOWL

This proposed structure has been called the “Bowl” and rightly so. It is to be half below ground and half above; and the upper half is to be built upon a bank constructed from the excavation from the lower half. The whole building is to be in the form of an ellipse, of concrete, with wooden seats resting upon the concrete.

The Yale Bowl inspired the building of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California in 1922 to host the Tournament of Roses football game, which had been first held on 1 January 1902. An early use of the name Rose Bowl is from the 14 November 1922 Los Angeles Times:

An observer of the game between California and U.S.C. at the opening of the new rose bowl, writing for the Berkeley paper, seems to discern just enough good points about this mammoth structure amid surroundings of unsurpassed beauty to damn it with faint praise.

The game inspired other ones, which about a decade later were being referred to as bowl games. From the 29 December 1935 New York Times:

Dorais suggested that a committee be formed to investigate the bowl games to determine whether they are “healthy appendages or cancerous growths.” There was no action taken on this suggestion.

Bowl games are, with one exception, played between university teams. The exception is the Super Bowl, the championship game of professional American football. In the late 1960s, there were two competing football leagues, the American Football League (AFL) and the National Football League (NFL). (In 1970, the leagues would merge into a single NFL, with two conferences, the AFC and NFC.) In 1966 it was decided that the champions of each league should play each other, and the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game was played on 15 January 1967, in which the NFL’s Green Bay Packers defeated the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. But the game was popularly dubbed the Super Bowl.

The name was coined by AFL co-founder Lamar Hunt, who was quoted in the 18 July 1966 New York Daily News as saying:

I think one of the first things we’ll consider is the date of the Super Bowl—that’s my term for the championship game between the two leagues. I’m in favor of playing it on a neutral site where we would be assured of good weather.

Hunt did not particularly like his coinage and never intended the name Super Bowl to be official. But the name caught on anyway, and in 1970 the newly merged league made the name official. An Associated Press report of 7 January 1970 records:

The man who gave the name to football’s greatest attraction sheepishly admitted yesterday that that he isn’t particular proud of his feat.

“I guess it is a little corny,” said Lamar Hunt, millionaire owner of the Kansas City Chiefs. “But it looks like we’re stuck with it.”

[…]

“I don’t know how I came up with it. It think it must be related to a ball that was popular with kids at the time. It was called super ball. It was tightly wound and very live. You could bounce it all over a house.

“My two kids—Lamar Jr., 10, and Sharon, 8—loved the ball. They played with it all the time. “[sic]So we got Super Bowl from super ball. Kinda silly, isn’t it. I’m not proud of it. But nobody’s come up with anything better.”

This last bit about the super ball must be treated with skepticism. After the fact explanations of a term’s origin, even by the coiner of an expression, are very often inaccurate. Other sources have often taken this explanation as gospel, even though Hunt, when he gave this explanation, said he was unsure about what inspired the name.

The more likely explanation is the prosaic one. Bowl was a well-established football term referring to a championship game between college teams, and the professional championship would presumably be at a higher, or super, level.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Clayton, Mary and Janet Mullins. “Saint George.” Old English Lives of Saints, Volume 2, Ælfric. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 59. Harvard University Press, 2019, 57.

Daggett, David. “The ‘Bowl.’” Yale Alumni Weekly, 22.29, 4 April 1913, 727–28 at 727. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858045561119&seq=749

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s. v. bolla, bolle.

Grimsley, Will (Associated Press). “Sports Angles.” Asbury Park Press (New Jersey), 7 January 1970, 47. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Kelley, Robert F. “Inquiry by Coaches Asked on Post-Season Contests.” New York Times, 29 December 1935, Sports 9/2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Mullins, Bill. “Re: Antedating of ‘Bowl’ (Football Stadium),” ADS-L, 17 December 2023.

“NFL-AFL Tilt to Rose Bowl?” (16 July 1966). Daily News (New York), 28C. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“On the New Grounds.” Boston Globe, 14 November 1903, 9/4. Newspapers.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s. v. bowl, n.1.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, Nov. 2010, s. v. Rose Bowl, n.2.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, Jun. 2012, s. v. Super Bowl, n.

Shapiro, Fred. “Antedating of ‘Bowl’ (Football Stadium),” ADS-L, 16 December 2023.

———. “Slight Antedating of ‘Super Bowl.’” ADS-L, 13 January 2020.

Williams, Harry A. “Sport Shrapnel.” Los Angeles Times, 14 November 1922, 3.2/5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Voice of America, 2017. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

America

5 February 2024

Detail of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map bestowing the name “America” on what is now known as South America

The continents of North and South America are named for Amerigo Vespucci (1451–1512). Vespucci made at least two voyages to the New World, one in 1499–1500 and another in 1501–02. He is alleged to have made two others, one before and one after the known voyages, but evidence for his participation in those expeditions is lacking. In a letter dated 4 September 1504, published the following year, Vespucci was the first to claim that new continents had been discovered, and in the letter he coined the term Mundus Novus (New World). The published letter was widely read throughout Europe.

While Vespucci, or any other European for that matter, cannot be truly said to have “discovered” America (after all, the Indigenous people of the land were already there), he was the first European to have recognized the significance of Columbus’s “discovery.” So the naming of the continents after him is apt.

Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller was the first to apply the name America to the New World, specifically to what is now the continent of South America on the world map that accompanied his 1507 Cosmographiae introduction (Introduction to Cosmography). In that book Waldseemüller, or more likely his collaborator Matthias Ringmann, justified the name and feminine form of America:

Nuc vo & he partes sunt latius lustratae /& alia quarta pars per Americu[m] Vesputiu[m] (ut in seqentibus audietur) inuenta est/qua non video cur quis iure vetet ab Americo inuentore sagacis ingenn viro Amerigen quasi Americi terra[m] / siue Americam dicenda[m]:cu & Europa & Asia a mulieribus sua for tita sint nomina.

(Now, these parts of the earth have been more extensively explored and a fourth part has been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci (as will be set forth in the following). Whereas both Europe and Asia received their names from women, I see no reason why anyone should justly object to calling this part America, as the land of Amerigo, after Amerigo, its discoverer, a man of great ability.)

Geradus Mercator was the first to apply the name America to what is now known as North America.

The name was in English usage by 1520, as evidenced by John Rastell’s poem A New Interlude of the year:

This sayde north p[ar]te is callyd europa
And this south p[ar]te callyd affrica
This eest p[ar]te is callyd ynde
But this newe land [i]s founde lately
Ben callyd america by cause only
Americus dyd furst them fynde.

The naming of America after Vespucci is widely accepted, but that has not stopped others from claiming alternative origins. These, however, uniformly lack any solid evidence.

There is a claim, promulgated in the twentieth century, that America is actually named after a fifteenth-century Bristol merchant named Richard Ameryk, who had some tenuous and vague connection with Cabot’s voyages of exploration (exactly what role he played is not known, but it was probably minor and connected with financing the voyages). While Ameryk did exist, the only evidence connecting him to the New World is a copy of the fifteenth century manuscript that says the continent was named for him. But the original manuscript was destroyed in an 1860 fire, and the passage in the copy is almost certainly a nineteenth-century interpolation. Fisherman from Bristol and other English ports did fish on the Grand Banks in the fifteenth century, prior to Columbus’s voyage, and it is plausible, and even likely, that they set up temporary camps on the coast of North America, but there is no evidence of them naming the place or otherwise recognizing it as a significant discovery.

Another alternative origin, more plausible than the Ameryk one but still lacking evidence, is that the name America derives from the Amerrisque mountain range in Nicaragua. This hypothesis has been circulating since the late nineteenth century. Amerrisque translates to “country of the wind” in Mayan, and the range is probably named for an Indigenous tribe of that name who once lived in the region. But no evidence from the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries of the existence of the name of the range, and the name could come from America, rather than vice versa, or the form of the name may have been altered under the influence of the term America. Any similarity between the Mayan name and America is almost certainly coincidence. The probability that some Indigenous term somewhere would resemble America is close to 100 percent, and this one would seem to be it.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020, s.v. America. Oxfordreference.com.

Hurlbut, George C. “The Origin of the Name ‘America.’” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York, 20, 1888, 183–96. JSTOR. DOI: 10.2307/196759.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2002, s.v. America, n., American, n. and adj.; September 2003, s.v. New World, n. and adj.

Rastell, John. A New Iuterlude. London: 1520, sig. C.iii. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Waldseemüller, Martin. Cosmographiae introductio. Joseph Fischer, Franz von Wieser and Charles George Herbermann, eds. New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1907, 30. Gale Primary Sources: Sabin Americana.

Image credit: Waldseemüller, Martin. Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque lustrationes. Strasbourg, France?: 1507. Library of Congress. Public domain image.