Re: The German Ocean

--- In cybalist@..., x99lynx@... wrote:

> 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.
>

Let me suggest that in English book learning is prevalent east of the
farmer/peasant line, ie the river Rhine, named thus since in the
English language, people living by agriculture west of the river
Rhine are called 'farmers', east of it 'peasants', a distinction
unique to that language. I recall an American woman who told me she
once had a conversation with a Swiss peasant on a vacation there, but
later inquiries by me to native speakers of that language said she
was wrong, there were no peasants in Switzerland. But how were they
to know the exact course of the upper Rhine?

Torsten