I wrote:
<<It is interesting to note that the (19th C) OED states that the word
"German" itself only comes into use in English in the 15th C. The first
citation is actually 1552 and defined by the Latin. The name "German"
apparently is not attested before that in English, except perhaps it seems as
"the German Ocean" which the OED calls a direct translation from Ptolemy "for
the sea east of Great Britain, the North Sea."
So it would appear in this case that book learning supplied a name long
before the name was even used.>>
Richard replied: (Fri Oct 11, 2002 12:22 pm)
<<Names of seas seem unlike river names. River names are mostly opaque, at
least in English, whereas names of (tidal) seas are mostly transparent!>>
If by transparent you mean their source is obvious -- that might be an
accident of time and place. European rivers names seem to predate sea names
in being recorded, with a few important exceptions. And there aren't as many
seas around Europe.
But, in English, there would appear to be a good many transparent river names
in North America -- where history can answer some questions we might have.
Lord knows what conclusions would have been drawn -- if they instead had
emerged out of prehistory like European Rivers -- with river names like the
numerous Avons, the Winooski, Elvis Lake (pre-Elvis Presley), the Rivanna
River, the Fluvanna River and the Anna River-- all named after women named
Anne, the Rivanna and Fluvanna are actually branches of the same Virginia
river -- or even for that matter the Hudson River. (E.g., "The name is
believed to originate from an ancient tribe who resided on its shores -- the
Chutsoni." :)
BTW, there's a wonderful piece from 1880 on "The Early Names of the Hudson
River" on the web at
http://webserver1.oneonta.edu/external/cooper/susan/hudson.html,
where the author counts twenty different names even before something like
1680, European and Native American alike. And if I'm right she missed a few
in the list that follows the later English and American namings. This river
had at least 30 different names despite being mainly "post-literate" --
before the name was formalized by the learned types.
As far as the transparency of sea names, just how transparent is the name
"Atlantic" or for that matter, the name "Ocean", in terms of their most
original meaning?
Analogy between "literate" American and "pre-literate" European naming does
not of course prove anything decisively, but it is evidence. And this
evidence does not favor universal, standard or official names for rivers or
seas (and perhaps other features) before writing. At best, this kind of
evidence suggests the earliest names preserved in writing would seem to be
coincidental and quite probably relatively recent.
Regards,
Steve Long