Etymology
The etymology of the name Atlas is uncertain and still debated. Virgil took pleasure in translating etymologies of Greek names by combining them with adjectives that explained them: for Atlas his adjective is durus, "hard, enduring", which suggested to George Doig that Virgil was aware of the Greek τλήναι "to endure"; Doig offers the further possibility that Virgil was aware of Strabo's remark that the native North African name for this mountain was Douris. Since the Atlas mountains rise in the region inhabited by Berbers, it has been suggested that the name might be taken from one of the Berber languages, specifically adrar, Berber for "mountain".
Some modern linguists derive it and its Greek root from the Proto-Indo-European root *tel, 'to uphold, support'; others suggest that it is a pre-Indo-European name. Others hold it is pre-Indo-European, or Pelasgian in origin, associated with the word "thalassa", meaning "sea".
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