Surprisingly words for the cardinal points are not that old. The Germanic word north was
borrowed into Romance languages like Spanish and Portuguese, Asturian, Aragonese and
Galician norte and like in French, Romanian, Italian, Friulian and Catalan nord. It is also
borrowed into Breton norzh. Its earliest written records were in Old Norse norðr, Old English
norþdǣl, “northern part/quarter”, norþhealf, “northern side” and Old High German nordan.
In general there is calculated a Prime Germanic *nurþa-. It must be of Pre Norse origin
because there is no equivalent in European languages. Possible equivalents in any sense are
outside of Europe in Okinawan にし (nisi), Yonaguni ニチ (nici), Lao ທ
ິ ດເໜ
ື ອ (thit nư̄ a) and
Thai: ทิศเหนือ (tít nĕua).
The Latin word was septentriō, that refers to the star sign of Pleiades, Ursa Major, Dipper. Its
word-root based on “seven” that was a number of completeness. In Slavonic languages is
one word Czech, Slovak, Slovene and Serbo-Croatian sever, Russian, Bulgarian and
Macedonian север (séver), from Old Church Slavonic: сѣверъ (sěverŭ). It is a Prime Baltic
word, distinctly and visibly in Lithuanian šiaurė. It is borrowed into northern Sami
Davviriikkat, but it is estranged. Also related is Ancient Greek βορέας, (boréas) that lacks the
first syllable and converted [w] to [b]. Albanian veri and Gagauz poyraz and Crimean Tatar
sırt are modifications of it, and maybe Basque ipar. It evolved from a Satem-European
*sewrw and is directly related with Arabic ‫( ﺷ ﻣﺎل‬šamāl). The Semitic word is borrowed into
some languages like Persian ‫( ﺷ ﻣﺎل‬šomâl), Azeri şimal, Uzbek shimol, Tajik шимол (šimol),
Crimean Tatar şimal, Karachay-Balkar шимал (şimal) and even in a Baltic language(how
possible?) Latvian: ziemeļi. Hebrew ‫( צָּפוֹן‬ṣṣāpwon) modificated its -m- to -p- because of the
following [w]. It is borrowed into Amharic ሰሜን (sämen). A further Semitic-related is in the
Shor-language қузам (quzam) and perhaps Manchu amargi and Burmese mrauk. Also
Semitic related is possibly Welsh: gogledd.
Another Indo-European word was in Sanskrit: उ तर (uttara) that is borrowed into many
languages like Oriya and Kannada: ଉ ର (uttara), Sinhalese: උ ර (utura), Telugu: ఉతరమ
(uttaramu), Punjabi: ਤਰ (uttar), Bengali: উ র (uttôr) Gujarati: ઉ ર (uttar), Central
Melanau, Indonesian and Malay: utara. It must be a Satem-Indo-European word too.
Perhaps it is related with Scottish Gaelic tuath and Irish tuaisceart. But if it is wrong, it is
related with Kurdish bakur ‫ ﺑ ﺎﮐور‬and possibly with Basque helburu.
In Slavonic languages exists another word that corresponds with Finnic languages: Czech
půlnoc, Polish: północ, Belarusian: по́ ўнач (póŭnač), Ukrainian: північ (pívnič) with Finnish
pohjoinen and Estonian põhi. It is the prime Uralic word and perhaps a Chinese-related with
Mandarin: 北 (běi), Min Dong: 北 (buoik, beik) Korean: 북 (buk) and Japanese: 北方 (hoppō),
Vietnamese: phía bắc, hướng bắc. The Mandarin long word form 北方 (běifāng) is borrowed
into Kapampangan on the Philippines: pangulu.