Re: what's going on in france Reply #125 – 2024-09-04, 11:17:45 Quote from: jax on 2024-09-02, 05:35:36That also goes for the sea we share that you call the Western Sea, we call the Eastern Sea, and the rest of the world call the Baltic Sea.We also call it the Oostzee. But perhaps you call the North Sea the South Sea?
Re: what's going on in france Reply #126 – 2024-09-04, 14:25:44 Only Estonians call the Baltic Sea Western (as it's literally to the west of Estonia). Finns call it Eastern (as direct translation from Swedish). Latvians and Lithuanians call it the Baltic Sea.North Sea is North Sea for everyone. It may have had a different name for Vikings.Edit: After some research on Wikipedia, I found that there's Nordfriisk language (Helgoland Frisian) where North Sea is called Weestsiie. But that's the only one, it seems. Last Edit: 2024-09-04, 15:55:04 by ersi
Re: what's going on in france Reply #127 – 2024-09-05, 09:08:06 Quote from: ersi on 2024-09-04, 14:25:44Edit: After some research on Wikipedia, I found that there's Nordfriisk language (Helgoland Frisian) where North Sea is called Weestsiie. But that's the only one, it seems.That's curious, because the Frisians used to call it the Frisian Sea.
Re: what's going on in france Reply #128 – 2024-09-05, 11:23:21 Are you sure it was Frisians calling it the Frisian sea and not the Dutch back when Frisians were more numerous?
Re: what's going on in france Reply #129 – 2024-09-06, 06:45:03 Quote from: ersi on 2024-09-04, 14:25:44North Sea is North Sea for everyone. It may have had a different name for Vikings.The Danes sometimes call the North Sea, or parts thereof, for Vesterhavet, the Western Sea. Haf is one of the Norse words for sea, together with sjó (sea) and marr (meer). Scandinavian mostly lost the latter, while West Germanic languages mostly lost the former, except indirectly in haven or in German Haff. Hav in Scandinavian is predominantly open sea or ocean, and that seems to always been the case.Haven't found reference to origin of North Sea. All the Scandinavian wikipedias blame the Frisians for the name (without attribution), which would make a lot of sense. Swedes also have Västerhavet, but that basically is the sea outside Gothenburg. Eastern Norway (the Oslo area) like Western Sweden (the Gothenburg area) is practically Outer Denmark in this context. For the rest of Norway, the North Sea is a southern sea. Norwegian from Viking Age and earlier either travelled south past the west coast of Denmark, or did island hopping by Shetland and Orkneys to Scotland/Ireland (alternatively via Faroe Islands to Iceland). There was no specific name for this route as far as I can tell. Norway itself is the seaway to the north. Also, as far as I can tell, except as a crossroad the North Sea interior wasn't used for much until the Dutch got a craving for fish over Doggerland and neighbouring areas.Norway also had a Western Sea, Vesterhavet, for the sea to the west of Norway, what's now called the Norwegian Sea. That can be seen on this 240 year old map (where the North Sea is also called the North Sea, though south of Norway and the map is printed in Copenhagen).
Re: what's going on in france Reply #130 – 2024-09-06, 10:35:16 Quote from: ersi on 2024-09-05, 11:23:21Are you sure it was Frisians calling it the Frisian sea and not the Dutch back when Frisians were more numerous?It's a bit hard to find proper info.This here is the best source I could find at a relatively quick glance, but it doesn't go in depth.https://web.archive.org/web/20230417084127/https://books.google.com/books?id=-edm1fMPbXwC&pg=PA70#v=onepage&q&f=falseIn any case, the Frisians switched to Noardsee. Frisian Wikipedia points out there's also a former Middle Sea: https://fy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middelsee
Re: what's going on in france Reply #131 – 2024-09-07, 10:03:40 Whoah, "Frisian was synonymous with 'merchant'; the noun indicated a function in society rather than ethnic descent." Wouldn't it be more like a case of generalised subset (or maybe you know a better term for this)?: Frisians are (tend to be) seafaring merchants, but there are more seafaring merchants than just Frisians. Of course, when they form a powerful guild called Frisian guild, and then the guild collects more members based on profession rather than ethnicity, then it gets closer to synonymy. In Tallinn in medieval times the gang of paupers (gathered around an institution called siechenhaus) was predominantly made up of Estonians, so the words for paupers and Estonians tended to mean the same thing in medieval Tallinn, which was reinforced by e.g. the church that was propped up specifically for them to attend. However, the siechenhaus did not (strictly) discriminate based on ethnicity. There were other ethnicities in siechenhaus, but the predominant component takes priority for the sake of convenient naming. It can happen even when a particular ethnicity is not statistically very dominant in a profession, say Jews and bankers. There are points in history when Jews tended to go into big business and banking, so all people in big business and banking were called Jews by some, even though statistically Jews were a minuscule fraction of the sum total of wealthy businessmen and bankers.What I'm saying is that identity is a multi-faceted thing. I have faith that most people of average intellect can keep several things in mind at the same time, particularly that any single word can mean more things at the same time and that any single thing can be labelled in a number of ways at the same time. For example, I am a son and a father and an uncle and a brother all at the same time. Is it too difficult to wrap one's mind around?Frisians (the people of Frisian coast and Frisian islands) tended to be seafaring merchants historically. Their guilds were so dominant at that that the words Frisian and merchant came to be seen as interchangeable. At the same time, Frisians were all along an ethnicity (a people of a particular place and language) also. Since ethnic Frisians only ever occupied the south-eastern coast of North Sea, I don't see them claiming the whole North Sea to themselves as Frisian Sea. It makes more sense to assume the Frisian Sea was a conceptual stretch by others around the sea who saw Frisians on it way too often.By the way, what's up with the (self-)designation of Frisians? Aren't they just Anglo-Saxons who did not reach England while those currently in England and USA did?
Re: what's going on in france Reply #132 – 2024-09-09, 08:25:33 I found a reference in a footnote here to what we hope is a better source. It does seem to be 40 years old, but hopefully the basics are still sufficiently on point:Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs frisons, 87; Lebecq, ‘On the use of the word “Frisian”’, 85–90. In short the Frisians are people who were sometimes a thorn in the side of the Romans, but around the 3rd of 4th century they vacated Frisia as they became part of the Franks, and after a couple of centuries new people moved in: presumably descendants of the Angles and Saxons who didn't cross to England and/or came back. They were then bestowed the name Frisians by the Franks. By the later middle ages the word Frisian also became synonymous with something like "international merchant."Quote from: ersi on 2024-09-07, 10:03:40Whoah, "Frisian was synonymous with 'merchant'; the noun indicated a function in society rather than ethnic descent." Wouldn't it be more like a case of generalised subset (or maybe you know a better term for this)?: Frisians are (tend to be) seafaring merchants, but there are more seafaring merchants than just Frisians. Of course, when they form a powerful guild called Frisian guild, and then the guild collects more members based on profession rather than ethnicity, then it gets closer to synonymy.A pars pro toto? Similarly I wonder what precisely the evidence is for the claim that "these people are certainly not all Frisians." The target audience is clearly supposed to know. Of course if it meant merchant then it's no different in principle than a name like Baker or Horsebuyer, but speaking from a position of ignorance it doesn't seem particularly implausible that people named "de Vries" are in fact descended from Frisians. The fact that they're not Frisians anymore doesn't tell us anything. Someone with a name like "van Lier" may well have had only a single ancestor who was in fact from Lier.QuoteFrisians (the people of Frisian coast and Frisian islands) tended to be seafaring merchants historically. Their guilds were so dominant at that that the words Frisian and merchant came to be seen as interchangeable. At the same time, Frisians were all along an ethnicity (a people of a particular place and language) also. Since ethnic Frisians only ever occupied the south-eastern coast of North Sea, I don't see them claiming the whole North Sea to themselves as Frisian Sea. It makes more sense to assume the Frisian Sea was a conceptual stretch by others around the sea who saw Frisians on it way too often.It's a bit difficult to find how far back Mare Frisium goes. Maybe it was simply the Romans doing a bit of handwaving about what's up north.Of some minor interest, Latin Wikipedia uses the name Mare Frisium for the Wadden Sea as per an 18th century source, but of course that doesn't tell us anything about the past: https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_Frisium
Topic: what's going on in france (Read 29557 times)
