North Sea

Old English norð- (in compounds) "northern, lying to the north" (adj.); norð (adv.) "northwards, to the north, in the north;" from Proto-Germanic *nurtha- (source also of Old Norse norðr, Old Saxon north, Old Frisian north, Middle Dutch nort, Dutch noord, German nord), which is probably an IE word, but of uncertain origin.

It might be ultimately from PIE *ner- (1) "left," also "below" (source also of Sanskrit narakah "hell," Greek neretos "deeper, lower down," enerthen "from beneath," Oscan-Umbrian nertrak "left"), as north is to the left when one faces the rising sun. The same notion apparently underlies Old Irish tuath "left; northern;" Arabic shamal "left hand; north." Compare Benjamin. Or perhaps the notion is that the sun is at its "lowest" point when in the north.

The usual word for "north" in the Romance languages ultimately is from English: Old French north (Modern French nord), borrowed from Old English norð; and Italian nord, Spanish norte, borrowed from French.

As a noun, "the northern cardinal point or direction," late 12c., from the adjective. From c. 1200 as "the north part of Britain, the region beyond the Humber." Generally, then "a region lying north of some other region." In U.S. history, "the states and territories north of Maryland and the Ohio River" (by 1796).

The geographical North Pole is attested from mid-15c. (earlier the Arctic pole, late 14c.; north pole in astronomy for "the fixed zenith of the celestial sphere" is from late 14c.). North American (n.) was used in 1766 by Franklin; as an adjective from 1770.

Ask where's the North? At York 'tis on the Tweed;

In Scotland at the Orcades; and there

At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.

[Pope, "Essay on Man"]

Middle English se, seo, from Old English sæ,"sheet of water, sea, lake, pool," from Proto-Germanic *saiwa- (source also of Old Saxon seo, Old Frisian se, Middle Dutch see, Dutch zee, German See, Swedish sjö), of unknown origin, outside connections "wholly doubtful" [Buck], and an IE etymon "has generally been doubted" [Boutkan]. The meaning "any great mass or large quantity" (of anything) is from c. 1200.

Germanic languages also use the more general Indo-European word (represented by English mere (n.1)) but have no firm distinction between "sea" and "lake," either large or small, by inland or open, salt or fresh. This may reflect the Baltic geography where the languages are thought to have originated. The two words are used more or less interchangeably in Germanic, and exist in opposite senses (such as Gothic saiws "lake, marshland," marei "sea;" but Dutch zee "sea," meer "lake"). Compare also Old Norse sær "sea," but Danish sø, usually "lake" but "sea" in phrases. German See is "sea" (fem.) or "lake" (masc.).

Boutkan writes that the sea words in Germanic likely were originally "lake," and the older word for "sea" is represented by haff. The single Old English word sæ glosses Latin mare, aequor, pontus, pelagus, and marmor. The range in the Old English word included "the expanse of salt water that covers much of the world" to individual great, distinctly limited bodies of water; it also was used of inland seas, bogs, lakes, rivers, and the Bristol Channel.

The meaning "dark area of the moon's surface" is attested from 1660s (see mare (n.2)); before the invention of telescopes they were supposed to be water. The phrase sea change "transformation," literally "a change wrought by the sea," is attested from 1610, first in Shakespeare ("The Tempest," I.ii). Sea legs, humorous colloquial term implying ability to walk on a ship's deck when she is pitching or rolling is from 1712. At sea in the figurative sense of "perplexed" is attested from 1768, from literal sense (in reference to ships) of "out of sight of land" (c. 1300).

The sea, the most intact and ancient thing on the globe.

    Everything it touches is a ruin; everything it abandons is new.

[Paul Valéry, "Notebook" entry, 1921, transl. Nathaniel Brudavsky-Brody]