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As opposed to this overwhelming
use of Ptolemy¡¯s versions there is evidence that the sea has not been
named ¡°German¡± by people of the Low Countries for a very long time.
Professor Ferjan Ormeling from Utrecht University(Netherlands) argues
that North Sea has been the local or popular name for the sea(for people
in the Low Countries) since the beginning of printed maps.
He quotes e.g. a map by Jan de Beeldsnijder named ¡°De Caerte van de
Oostersche Bee: De Noort Zee¡± dated 1526. Evidence is obvious therefore,
that the sea was first called North Sea in its equivalent(Forms by people
of the Netherlands in the Middle Ages. Although these people are called
¡°Dutch¡± in the English language, a word etymologically identical with
¡°Deutsch¡±(German), they do not call themselves this way, still less
by the Latin form ¡°Germanicus¡±(The Dutch word ¡°Duits¡± mean ¡°German¡±).
According to Egli, the local inhabitants called the large bay north
of the Rhine delta Zuider Zee, or South Sea.
As counterpart to it, the large open sea to the north was named Noord
Zee. (The Zuiderzee has been renamed Ijsselmeer, following its damming
in 1934.) There reportedly had also been a ¡°Middelzee¡± in medieval times
in Friesland but it has been dry land since the 16th century. A. Haeyens
names the sea on his map of 1585 showing the estuary of the River Ems
¡°De Noort Zee¡±.
I was glad to find a lovely piece of another evidence for the early
use of the name ¡°North Sea¡±. The Swiss chronicler J. Stumpf supplemented
his Schwyzer Chronic (1554) with several beautiful maps. Among them
a map of Europe dated 1554 featured the name ¡°Mitternchtig Meer¡±(old
German North Sea) for the North Sea. The Baltic Sea however was named
¡°Das Deutsche Meer¡±.
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