page_title: Atlantic Ocean
section_title: Etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Atlantic Ocean / Etymology
caption_attribution_description: English: A very scarce, c. 1710, map of Africa by Daniel de la Feuille. Depicts the continent of Africa form an early 18th century perspective. The Niger River is mapped with surprising accuracy, especially considering its highly inaccurate mappings nearly 100 years later in the 19th century. The Mountains of the Moon, supposed source of the Nile, are located considerably south of where they appear in other maps of the period. Early Ptolemaic maps do note these mountains as well as two large lakes just to the north. Though the Mountains are present, both of these lakes are absent indicating an interesting evolution, away from the Ptolemaic conception, in African cartography. In southern Africa to large empires are named, Monoemugi and Monomotapa. This is the great southern African gold mining region and these names are likely taken from the names of prominent Congolese tribal rulers. Surrounding the map are the curious addition of twelve armorial crests. Crests include those of both Arab and African powers in the region including: Barbarie (Algier, Tunis, Tripoli, Barca ) Maroc , Egypt, Notolie, Malta, Congo, Nubia, Monomotape, and Nigreitie. Many of these kingdoms and their associated armorial crests are purely conjectural. Ethiopia for example is indicated as distinct from Abyssinia with two separate crests, both unrelated to any actual crests that the kingdom seems to have used. The allegorical title cartouche in the upper right quadrant features several Africans cooking over a fire while an Impala or Antelope looks on. This map was originally prepared for inclusion as chart no. 5 in the 1702 edition of De la Feuille's Atlas Portatif. This map is from the later, 1710 edition.
context_page_description: The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceans, with an area of about 106,460,000 km². It covers approximately 20 percent of Earth's surface and about 29 percent of its water surface area. It separates the "Old World" from the "New World".
  The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Europe and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west. As one component of the interconnected World Ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, and the Southern Ocean in the south. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean and the South Atlantic Ocean at about 8°N.
  Scientific explorations of the Atlantic include the Challenger expedition, the German Meteor expedition, Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the United States Navy Hydrographic Office.
context_section_description: The oldest known mentions of an "Atlantic" sea come from Stesichorus around mid-sixth century BC (Sch. A. R. 1. 211): Atlantikôi pelágei (Greek: Ἀτλαντικῷ πελάγει; English: 'the Atlantic sea'; etym. 'Sea of Atlantis') and in The Histories of Herodotus around 450 BC (Hdt. 1.202.4): Atlantis thalassa (Greek: Ἀτλαντὶς θάλασσα; English: 'Sea of Atlantis' or 'the Atlantis sea') where the name refers to "the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles" which is said to be part of the sea that surrounds all land. In these uses, the name refers to Atlas, the Titan in Greek mythology, who supported the heavens and who later appeared as a frontispiece in Medieval maps and also lent his name to modern atlases. On the other hand, to early Greek sailors and in Ancient Greek mythological literature such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, this all-encompassing ocean was instead known as Oceanus, the gigantic river that encircled the world; in contrast to the enclosed seas well known to the Greeks: the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In contrast, the term "Atlantic" originally referred specifically to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast. The Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of millions of years ago.
  The term "Aethiopian Ocean", derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century. During the Age of Discovery, the Atlantic was also known to English cartographers as the Great Western Ocean.
  The term The Pond is often used by British and American speakers in context to the Atlantic Ocean, as a form of meiosis, or sarcastic understatement. The term dates to as early as 1640, first appearing in print in pamphlet released during the reign of Charles I, and reproduced in 1869 in Nehemiah Wallington's Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in The Reign of Charles I, where "great Pond" is used in reference to the Atlantic Ocean by Francis Windebank, Charles I's Secretary of State.
caption: The Aethiopian Ocean in a 1710 French map of Africa
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