Naming
The name, Variscan, comes from the Medieval Latin name for the district Variscia, the home of a Germanic tribe, the Varisci, and was coined in 1880 by Vienna geologist Eduard Suess. Variscite, a rare green mineral found in the region and first discovered in the Vogtland district of Saxony in Germany, which is in the Variscan belt, has the same etymology. Hercynian, on the other hand, derives from the Hercynian Forest. Both words were descriptive terms of strike directions observed by geologists in the field, variscan for southwest to northeast, hercynian for northwest to southeast. The variscan direction reflected the direction of ancient fold belts cropping out throughout Germany and adjacent countries and the meaning shifted from direction to the fold belt proper. One of the pioneers in research on the Variscan fold belt was the German geologist Franz Kossmat, establishing a still valid division of the European Variscides in 1927.
The other direction, Hercynian for the direction of the Harz Mountains in Germany, saw a similar shift in meaning. Today hercynian is often used as a synonym for variscan, being somewhat less used than the latter. In the USA it is only used for European orogenies, the contemporaneous and genetically linked mountain-building phases in the Appalachian Mountains have different names.
The regional term variscan underwent a further meaning shift since the 1960s. It now is generally used for late paleozoic fold belts and orogenetic phases having an age of approximately 380 to 280 Ma. Some publications use the term variscan for fold belts of even younger age, deviating from the meaning as a term for the North American and European orogeny related to the Gondwana-Laurasia collision.
Read more about this topic: Variscan Orogeny
Famous quotes containing the word naming:
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Husband,
who am I to reject the naming of foods
in a time of famine?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul—half a drop! ah, my Christ!—
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!—
Yet will I call on him!—O, spare me, Lucifer!—
Where is it now? ‘T is gone; and see where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!—
Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!”
—Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)