Why is the Eastern World known as the “Orient”, and the Western World is known as the “Occident”? What is the root behind these respective terms?
I know what you’re thinking…it’s because the West Indies were found by Occident! 
- Jinx
Occident, from Latin “to fall”, referring to the sun setting.
According to MW, Occident comes from the Latin occidere, which means “fall”, referring to the setting of the sun in the West.
Orient, not surprisingly means “rise,” for the place the sun rises.
Orient: form Latin oriens “to come out” referring to the sun rising. ( I hit submit too early)
Ooooh! Is this a first? An in-between simulpost?
Nolite timere eos qui corpus occidunt, animam autem non possunt occidere. ( Matthew 10)
A sandwich! 
Septentrionalis: Northern in Latin (refers to the 7 stars of Ursa Minor, the Little Dipper)
Australis: Southern
Chinese:
Bei: North as in Beijing, North Capital
Nan: South, as in Nanjing, south capital
Dong: East and in Dongjing: East capital
Xi: west and is Xi’an.
Now, can someone explain the origins of the English words, North, South, East, West?
I suppose it would be bad form to point out that there is no spoken “Chinese” language, and that sailor’s list is of transliterations of a spoken language (Mandarin, I think).
Therefore the label “Chinese” to introduce Bei, Nan, Dong, and Xi is WRONG!
If someone can explain the origins of the English words for the points of the compass, they should tell the OED.
They just seem to have evolved from earlier languages. There is one theory that “east” comes from a root “aus-” which means “from the dawn” in an Old Teutonic language.
“Orient” has the same latin root as “abortion” - from orior = to rise.
“Occident” is from occidere = to fall or go down, or set (as in sun).
verse?
And fear ye not them that kill the body and are not able to kill the soul
Orient:
Japan is self-named Nihon — this is written with the Chinese characters ri ‘sun’ and ben ‘root, origin’. The Chinese name for Japan is Ri Ben Guo, literally ‘sun origin country’. In the older Wade-Giles system of Chinese transliteration, that was spelled “Jih-Pen Kuo” — from which we get both “Japan” and Marco Polo’s “Cipangu.”
Anatolia is another “Land of the Rising Sun”: it comes from the Greek words ’[symbol]ana[/symbol] ‘up’ and [symbol]tellw[/symbol] ‘rise’.
The name of Asia itself may come from an Akkadian word âSû ‘to go out, come forth’, i.e. referring to the rising of the sun, related to Hebrew yatsa’ ‘to go out, come forth’.
Occident:
The Arabic name of Morocco is al-Maghrib, literally ‘the place of sunset’ — from the verb gharaba ‘to go away, depart; (of the sun) to set’. So in contrast to Japan, Morocco is literally “Land of the Setting Sun.”
The ancient Greeks borrowed the name ’[symbol]Eurwph[/symbol] (Europe) from the same Semitic root for sunset as Arabic gharaba, Hebrew ‘arab, so Europe is also “Land of the Setting Sun.”
thanks, i am not so good on latin but i love a prophetic word and never hesitate to ‘be a berean’
the last part of the verse is quite revealing as well
my regards
:rolleyes:
Who’s “speaking” anything here. Hanyu Pinyin is the offcicial Romanization system of the PRC since 1958 and of Taiwan since rather recently. Hanyu Pinyin romanises Putonghua or Mandarin but it is the official system in all of China. In Canton people speak Cantonese and other languages but all notices written in Roman characters are written using pinyin. Anywhere in China and any official documents out side China will render North as Bei, etc. In other words, while there are many languages spoken in China, they are all officially written the same in Chinese characters and written the same in Roman Characters.
sailor (preparing my 7th annual visit to China)
Sailor, one nitpick would be that you have ignored the non-Han Chinese languages such as Zhuang, which use something other than the official pinyin romanization system.
For North, South, East and West in Chinese, the origen of the written character is probably the most historically accurate. Without getting overly literal, it is commonly accepted practice to use Mandarin pronunciation based pin yin to refer to the characters, otherwise it is a complete tower of babel to try figure out what actual character a romanization can be referring to. Anyone trying to work through Wade-Giles, Yale, the old Taiwan romanization, etc will know what I’m talking about. You can find references for North (“bei” in pinyin) written as “bei” “b’ei” “pei” “bey” “bay” depending on the romanization system.
Well, we could nitpick all day but come on, hanyu pinyin is the official romanization system adopted by China and it is used on all official documents inside and outside of China Even westerners now tend to say Beijing when the correct name in the English language is still Pekin. Pinyin gets around.
I guess we could also say there is no “Spanish” language because several languages are spoken in Spain and so, to speak correctly, one should say “Castilian” rather than Spanish. But if someone says “norte” is North in Spanish I think we all know what is meant and jumping on him to say there are several languages spoken in Spain etc is just silly. Ok, so Norte is north in Castilian.
The problem is that if you speak like that, then people take you for a pompous anal-retentive show off. But if you speak so that we all know what you mean, then nit-pickers come out of the woodwork and eat you alive. You just can’t win.
BTW, and getting back to the points of the compass, I find this very interesting: In the 15th and 16th century, Apin and Portugal were the great seafaring nations. They were way ahead when it came to navigation and sailing. And yet. . . they dropped their own, old, Latin names for the points of the compass and took the English names. I am perplexed by this and would love to know how this came to happen.
Oriental and Occidental have Astrological origins as terms that refer to a planets position relative to the Sun (East or West), and is one indicator of their strength as either benefic or malefic influences according to their own nature.
Saturn, Jupiter and Mars benefit from orientality, whereas Venus and Mercury benefit from occidentality.