Black, White, Yellow and Red: why do these seas have such "colored" names

The seas of our planet sometimes have very interesting names, the meaning of which is not always clear the first time. Of course, there are seas that are named after their discoverers or by analogy with the nearby land regions, in which case everything is clear. But there are seas in the World Ocean, in the name of which there is a color characteristic, we will talk about them today.

Black Sea

The Black Sea was not always so gloomyly called. At different times, it had the names: "Scythian", "Inhospitable Sea", "Blue Sea" and many more options. But already on medieval maps you can find the modern name of the sea, the origin of which has several versions.

According to one of them, the nomadic Turkic peoples were called the Black Sea, and the name sounded like "Kara Deniz". There are two versions of this name: black in the meaning of “inhospitable” and black in the meaning of “northern”, as some Asian peoples had a custom to identify parts of the world with a certain color.

According to another version, it was called the black sea by sailors who noticed that if the anchor was lowered for a long time in the sea, the metal becomes black, which was not observed in any other sea on the planet. And this happens because of the huge accumulation of hydrogen sulfide at the bottom of the sea.

White Sea

With the etymology of the name of this sea, everything is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. One of the versions is based on the fact that the Slavic peoples named the white sea due to the fact that most of the year it is covered with ice and snow, unlike the other warmer seas. According to another version, white means "bright" or "sacred" and is also associated with the Slavic peoples living on its shores.

But according to the third version, the White Sea was called by analogy with the Aegean Sea. When Christian pilgrims came to these lands, they gave this sea the name White, as the southern Slavs called and still call the Aegean Sea. In support of this version, other examples of southern names in the Russian North are also given. Be that as it may, the name "White Sea" was assigned to this sea on maps of the 16th century.

Yellow Sea

The yellow sea got its name by the color of the water - it really has a yellow tint. And the thing is in the rivers that flow into this sea and carry a lot of suspended material. The main one is the Yellow River, which in Chinese sounds like the "Yellow River". It is she who brings the bulk of dissolved impurities to the sea.

In the middle reaches, the Yellow River crosses the Loess Plateau, a region composed of well-soluble sedimentary rock - loess. Loess just has the very light yellow hue that the waters of the Yellow River acquire, and beyond it the sea into which it flows.

Red sea

If everything is unambiguous with the Yellow Sea, then there are several versions regarding the Red Sea that explain its name. One of them, by analogy with the Black Sea, indicates its southern location, that is, red does not mean the color of the water itself, but indicates a part of the world. According to another version, travelers called the Red Sea due to the fact that during the seasonal propagation of algae it acquires a brick-red hue. This name was fixed to the sea in the days of Antiquity and is mentioned in the works of Greek historians from the II century BC.