The 14th International Seminar on Sea Names Geography, Sea Names, and Undersea Feature Names

The Mediterranean: One sea, many names

Pokoly Bela (Senior Adviser, Committee on Geographical Names, Ministry of Agriculture and Regional Development, Hungary)

1.An Important Sea

1.1. The Mediterranean Sea, covering an area of 2,5 million sq. kms, holds its importance in its geographical position. Wedged between Europe, Asia and Africa, it is lined by no less than 21 independent states. Of all countries of the world at least one in ten has a coastline along its shores.

Fig. 1. The Countries around the Mediterranean Sea

1.2. Indeed the sea has, over the centuries, lost some of its overwhelming position. With the expanding contacts to the Far East and with the exploration of the „new” continents, it was realized that it is no longer the centre of earth.

1.3 With the opening of the Suez Canal, with the discoveries of vastly important oil and gas deposits in the Middle East, and with expanding international contacts and tourism it has witnessed a comeback in the past two centuries.

2. It is not possible to highlight all aspects of this sea however, so I need to look some aspects of its naming.

2.1. As with all seas, local people of ancient times, unaware of other seas called it The

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Sea. Similarly with other seas, it was also called Great Sea by local peoples living along its shores. 2.2. The first specific names applied to the sea could be the Egyptian “Great Green” or “Very Green” from around the 2nd millenium BC (as decrypted from hieroglyphs), but these names may refer also to the Nile Delta.

2.3. Old Testament sources refer to the Hind/Last/Utmost/or Western Sea (yam ha- aharon [Deuteronomy 11:24, 34:2]), and to the Sea of the Philistines (yam pelishtim [Exodus 23:31])

2.4. Both Greeks and Romans have, however colloquially called it “Our Sea” (Latin: Mare Nostrum), parallel with their rising consciousness.

2.5. In the work titled "De mundo" and probably not correctly attributed to Aristotle we find the expression "inner sea" (he eso thalassa) as opposed to the outer sea or ocean: it is this term that will eventually lead, in Latin translation, to the name Mare Internum. The Roman historian Sallust is believed to have used first this term in his description of the Jugurthine War in the 1st century BC.

Fig. 2. Mare Internum on the Map of the Roman Empire in a modern school atlas ©Cartographia, Budapest 1997

3. Based on the expression "inner sea" (he eso thalassa) the Greeks started to use the name Mesogeios (Μεσόγειος), meaning "in the interior of lands" (μεσο, "middle" + γαιος, "land, earth"), some time around the birth of Christ.

3.1. Although the Latin term „mediterraneus” primarily means landlocked, „in the interior of lands”, it was Isidore of Seville (560-636 A.D.), one of the great scholars of the early Middle Ages, who in his work Etymologiae first fixed the term “Mediterraneus” in the present sense “between the lands”.

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Mare Magnum est quod ab occasu ex Oceano fluit et in meridiem vergit, deinde ad septentrionem tendit; quod inde magnum appellatur quia cetera maria in conparatione eius minora sunt. Iste est et Mediterraneus, quia per mediam terram usque ad orientem perfunditur, Europam et Africam Asiamque disterminans. (The Great Sea flows from the ocean in the west; it faces south and reaches north. It is called 'great' because other seas pale in comparison; it is called the Mediterranean because it washes against the surrounding land all the way to the east, dividing Europe, Africa, and Asia3 – in: Predrag Matvejević: Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape Translated by MICHAEL HENRY HEIM. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999.)

Fig. 3. Part of the world of Isidore of Seville as presented by K.Miller’s Mappaemundi. Stuttgart, 1895-1898

3.2. Subsequent cartographers of the Middle Ages used the term Mare Mediterraneum in the sense “between the lands” (of Europe, Asia and Africa)2 until the end of the 18th century, or roughly the time, when Latin was used for official documents.

Fig. 4. Sebastian Münster’s 1540 edition

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of Ptolemy’s Geographia from James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota

Fig. 5. Excerpt from a map of Europe Abraham Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. 1570 Antwerp

Fig. 6. Excerpt from a map of Europe by Johann Matthias Hase, 1789

3.3. With an overlap, from the 17th century onward national (French, English etc.) names gradually replace Latin in maps and atlases.

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Fig. 7. John Thomson’s Chart of the Mediterranean Sea 1817, Edinburgh

4. Today the sea is basically referred to in its translated forms of the Latin „Mediterraneum” in most languages, in its simplified form, or, in the case of Turkish, using the colour of white (bright), and – in Arabic – combining the specific elements of „middle” and „white”.

4.1. A summary in table form is given below for the names of the Mediterranean Sea in a number of languages3 :

Language Name English translation

Arabic Al-Baħr Al-Abyad Al- White Central Middle/ Sea/ ر حب ل ا) Mutawassit ( طس وت م ل ا ضيبألا English Mediterranean Sea French /la mer/ Méditerranée Mediterranean Sea Spanish Mar Mediterráneo Mediterranean Sea Italian /mar/ Mediterraneo Mediterranean Sea Slovenien Sredozemsko morje Mediterranean Sea Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian Sredozemno more Mediterranean Sea Albanian deti Mesdhe Mediterranean Sea Greek Mesogeios (Μεσόγειος) Mediterranean Sea Turkish Akdeniz White (bright) Sea (Middle (central (ןֹו כיִּתַה םָּי ַה) Hebrew Hayam Hatikhon Sea German Mittelmeer Middle (central) German formerly, rarely: Mittelländisches Meer Sea Mediterranean Sea Russian Средиземное море Mediterranean Sea

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References:

1 Predrag Matvejević: Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape. Translated by MICHAEL HENRY HEIM. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999.

2 Egli, J.J. Nomina geographica. 2. Auflage, Leipzig, 1893

3 Päll, Peeter, Maailma kohanimed (Geographical names of the world). Tallinn 1999

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