Names on the Ocean Bottom, or Some Observations on the Invisible Landscape

AMONG THE NEARLY WIDE-OPEN SPACES where the place-namer has been able to exeroise his art increasingly in recent decades are, first, the universe, which, having bowed to Miss Fuller (in spite of Carlyle) and the march of science, the place-namer has accepted as his oyster; second, more specifically, the moon, both fore and aft, now the subject of frequent maps in the daily newspapers; third, the subcontinent of Antarctica, upon whose white surface, figuratively, hundreds of new names have appeared as a result of the extensive explorations following World War II; and fourth, the ocean bottom, where scientists are daily adding new names. Although the oceans cover 71 per cent of the surface of the earth (about 140,000,000 square miles), the number of names labeling features of the land forming their bottom is extremely small. Accurate maps exist for only about one per cent of this area. Indeed, place names in the abyssal deeps, which occupy, at a guess, 90 per cent of the ocean area, were, until very recently, almost nonexistent. It is ironic to note, says one authority, that names for the constellations and signs of the zodiac, stretching through the depths of space, date from perhaps 3,000 B.C., while names still do not exist for countless sub-oceanio features comparatively so nea·rus on our own planet. Moreover, much more is known about the surface of the moon, many of whose features have long been named, than is known about many parts of the nearby ocean depths. Submarine place names on general and popular maps, depicting oceans and continents as apart from navigational charts, were almost unheard of a decade or so ago, and are not common now. Among map publications in the English language, the only area

Abstract licence: CC BY

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