Why is the Black Sea called the Black Sea? Easily explained

There are different statements about why the Black Sea is called the Black Sea. It cannot be due to the black water, as this is a completely normal color. In this article we have summarized where the sea originally got its name from.

That is why the Black Sea is called the Black Sea

There are several explanations for the origin of the name.

• One explanation says that the waters of the Black Sea are not "transparent". If you look into the Black Sea, you can only look 40 to 50 centimeters deep.
• Historically, the origin of the name is said to come from this source: When the Ottomans occupied Anatolia, the leaders of the Ottomans looked for a sonorous name that will be remembered for the sea.
• Initially, the name that the Genoese and Venetians gave the water was retained. They in turn called it "Mare Maggiore", which literally means the "Great Sea".
• However, if you adopt this name in the Ottoman language, the early language of the Turkish people, you get the name "Kara Deniz", where the word "Deniz" stands for sea. "Kara" in the literal sense had many interpretations and interpretations. So "kara" can be translated as "large", but also "dark" and "cloudy".
• Over time, people simply changed the meaning of the word "kara" into the word "dark". As the years progressed, the expression "sinister" simply changed to the terms "cloudy" and "black".
• When Slavs, for example, Russians and Bulgarians entered the country, they left the name unchanged and kept the name. So the name of the Black Sea became established, although it did not really make it black.
• Another source deviates from the explanation just mentioned. It says the following: The four directions of the sky were named with colors by the Ottomans. So here stood the blue for the east and the red for the south. The color white was assigned to the west and black to the north.
• So it happened that the seas near the Ottoman power area were given the following names: The water to the south was called the Sea of ​​the South. It is nothing more than what is known as the "Red Sea". The "Black Sea" is therefore in the north, starting from the cardinal direction of the Ottoman Empire. There is also the "White Sea". This is known today as the Aegean and is located in the west of the empire.

Usually a sea is blue. We explain why this is the case in another article.