History and Etymology
The Black Sea deluge theory dates the genesis of the Sea of Azov to 5600 BC, and there are traces of Neolithic settlement in the area it now covers. In antiquity, it was known as Lake Mæotis, the Maeotian Lake or the Maeotian Sea (Greek ἡ Μαιῶτις λίμνη and Latin Palus Maeotis), after the tribe of Maeotae which inhabited the Maeotian marshes east of the sea. In the antique epoch local inhabitants called the sea Temerinds. In medieval times, Russians named it the Sea of Surozh, after the Crimean city of Surozh (now Sudak).
The current name is popularly said to come from a Polovtsian prince named Azum or Asuf, who was killed defending a town in this region in 1067. Alternatively, it may originate from Turkish "asak" which means "low".
Read more about this topic: Sea Of Azov
Famous quotes containing the words history and/or etymology:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)