Re: quo meridies ivit?

From: "Dan Jones"

> Just a question about the fate of the Latin words for south, east, north
and
> west (meridies, oriens, septentriones, occidens). Where did they go? The
> modern romance names are:
As far as French is concerned, they're alive and well and living as
adjectives:

French: méridional, oriental, septentrional, occidental  (as in: vent
septentrional -- north wind)

There are also the nouns, l'Orient and l'Occident. I think North and South
get the short end of the stick; maybe they exist in some poetic contexts,
but I've never seen them.

I imagine other Romance langs do something similar, but will have to do a
little dictionary search.

...(rustle, rustle, rustle)...

Yep.

Italian: meridionale, orientale, settentrionale, occidentale (adj.)
           meridione, oriente, settentrione, occidente (n.)

Spanish: meridional, oriental, septentrional, occidental
             oriente, occidente (couldn't find the others, though "south"
offers "mediodía".)

Portuguese: meridional, oriental, boreal, ocidental
                  oriente, ocidente ("east" also offers "levante")

Romanian: No resources.

> French: sud, est, nord, ouest
> Italian: sud, est, nord, ovest
> Spanish: sur, este, norte, oeste
> Portuguese: sul, este, norte, oeste
> Romanian: sud, est (or rasarit- the a's have breves), nord, vest
>
> All borrowed from Germanic (in fact, according to my Dictionary of French
> Etymology, the terms are borrowed from English) sources. But how, why and
> when? And why did all the Romance languages adopt them?
Dunno.

Kou