How is it that Europeans hadn’t named the Pacific Ocean prior to Balboa’s “discovery” in 1513?
Russian traders had found Siberia and Marco Polo had been in SE Asia over 200 yrs earlier.
I wouldn’t expect that this Ocean often came up in regular conversations among Europeans at any time between the 13th and 16th Centuries, but surely there were a few who were aware of it and would want a common term to use when there was need to reference it. What name would Khan have told to Polo? What kind of Venetian “spin” would Polo have given the name?
Also, in modern east Asian Languages are the names for the Pacific Ocean more closely related to the name used prior to European contact? Examples? Or do modern Asian languages use a name that is derived from or influenced by "Pacifico”?
In Korea it’s called Taepyeongyang, which means ‘Great Peaceful Ocean.’ Quite likely they got the name from the Chinese who, I presume, didn’t wait for the Europeans to come by and give them a name for that large body of water. Possibly the Europeans called it the Pacific Ocean because that’s what the Asians were calling it in their own languages. Funny it’s named that way since it’s the most violent body of water in the world.
I really think Balboa was under the impression he’d found something “new”, so I doubt that he was influenced by, or even thought to consider, Korean or Chinese names.
On the contrary, “Great Peaceful Ocean” leads me to suspect that the Chinese and Korean may have been influenced by the name “Pacifico”.
Anyone with any definite knowledge on this subject?
Because until they discovered America, and established to their satisfaction that America was a separate land mass and not an eastward extension of Asia, it wasn’t obvious that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were two different things. **
Russian traders didn’t begin to penetrate Siberia until the late 1500’s. Polo and others had been to China during the heyday of the Mongols, although Europeans received their writings with varying degrees of skepticism. But again, everyone understood that at some point, China and its offshore islands ended and open water began. Given that the world was round and there was water west of Europe, that had to be the case. But no one knew there were two separate oceans.
In Japanese, it’s “Taiheiyou”: Taihei = Peaceful, You = Ocean. And as in Korean, this name came from Chinese. I don’t know whether the Chinese name predates the use of “Pacific Ocean” in Europe, however. My guess is that it’s unrelated to the term “Pacific,” but I can’t be sure.