Mapmakers once called the southern Atlantic Ocean the Ethiopian Ocean
The Original Name
Up to the 19th century, the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean was formally known as the Ethiopian/Aethiopian Sea in classical geographical works.
This was the name that appeared on ancient maps, up to the 19th century.
The roots of such etymology can be described by how over time, areas referred to as place names often expand or contract. As such, what is termed “toponymic displacement” or geographic displacement. becomes commonplace.
European geographers used the term ‘Libyan’ to refer to North African people of Berber background. The people who inhabited lands further south of the Sahara were called ‘Ethiopians’ (or Aethiopians) and the name used for the lands below the Sahara was ‘Ethiopia.’
Ethiopia was also used as the synonym for the Nubian Kingdom of Kush (or Meroe). The present country called Ethiopia was hardly known, and when it came to the knowledge of European geographers it was called ‘Abyssinia’ (from the Arabic ethnic designation ‘Habesh.’
The word Ethiopia was also used for unknown or quasi-mythical lands situated to the south or east of the Mediterranean.
It includes what looks like a part of an old map showing the western coastline of Africa, the ocean labelled “Aethiopian Ocean.”
The graphic’s caption adds: “Today’s southern half of the Atlantic Ocean in classical geographical works was known as Aethiopian or Ethiopian Sea or Ocean.
The name remained in maps from ancient times until 19th century.”
But a comment on the post points out: “Totally great, except Ethiopia is on the other side of the continent!”
And Facebook’s fact-checking system (Instagram belongs to Facebook) has flagged the post as possibly false.
Ethiopia is a country in the Horn of Africa, on the eastern side of the continent. Is it true that the Atlantic Ocean, on Africa’s west coast, was once called the Ethiopian Ocean?
An ancient name
Ethiopia is one of the oldest countries in the world. Its name derives from the ancient Greek “Aethiopia”, which Europeans used to describe various parts of Africa. It is mentioned several times in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, ancient sagas said to be written by Homermore than 2,000 years ago.
But a map dated 1584, 30 years later, names the ocean to the west of Africa and south of the equator as “Oceanus Aethiopicus”—Latin for “Ethiopian Ocean.” This is today’s South Atlantic Ocean. On the map, the ocean north of the equator is labelled “Oceanus Atlanticus,” the Atlantic Ocean.
The next map in the online Princeton collection is from 1644. Again, the Ethiopian Ocean is west of Africa and south of the equator. The waters north of the equator are named “Mare Atlanticum”—the Atlantic Sea. A sea is generally understood to be smaller than an ocean.
The Ethiopian Ocean starts to disappear in a map dated 1710. Here, the coastal region from Africa’s western bulge to its southern tip is the “Ethiopian Sea.” Everything west of that, north and south of the equator to a coastline identified as “part of Brasil,” is the Atlantic Ocean.
The collection is just a sample of the many old European maps of Africa, so it’s not evidence that the name did not persist on other maps until the 19th century, or 1800s. But it does show that at least the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean was once known as the Ethiopian Ocean.
The African interior, which was unknown to European ‘explorers’ and geographers around the 15th-16th centuries, was generally called Ethiopia. The eastern South Atlantic Ocean was called the Aethiopian/Ethiopian Sea/Ocean due to the fact such part of the ocean was in proximity to the landmass called Ethiopia. This part of the ocean was commonly dubbed the “Ethiopian Ocean” (or Sea) through the 1700s.
In the maps of this time, the Ethiopian Ocean was shown to stretch from the South Atlantic into the western Indian Ocean. Oceans and seas were conceptualized and titled as strips of water surrounding landmasses.
The discreet naming of oceans surfaced in the 1800s. Decades after the classical use of the name had become obsolete, botanist William Albert Setchell (1864–1943) used the term for the sea around some islands near Antarctica.
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