Mapping vocabulary

What is a cay? And a fjord? Discover the meaning of 10 geographical terms

Image: Andrew Neel

Geography, like all academic disciplines, has its own vocabulary and terminology. Concerned with everything from physical phenomena of the planet to social interactions, geographers have many specialized terms and concepts. You’ve probably used some of the words in this list. Do atlas, fjord, geyser, lagoon, and volcano ring a bell? Yet, do you know exactly what they mean or where they originated? In this article, we are going through 10 terms that will turn you into a true geographer!

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An atlas is a collection of maps bound in a volume or book, but have you ever wondered why we call it that? The story is quite interesting and has to do with Greek mythology. Atlas was a member of the older family of Gods, a Titan. It is believed that in Ancient Greek, Atlas meant "The Bearer of the Heavens."

So, what’s the connection with maps? Apparently, it was so named because some early collections showed a representation of Atlas supporting the heavens on his shoulders. The first documented use of the term dates back to 1595 when a collection by the German-Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator was published. In the preface, Mercator explains why he chose this particular allusion: He considered Titan Atlas to be the first great geographer.

Image: Dong Zhang

In English fjord is a term applied to a deep and narrow inlet in the coast caused by the submergence of a deep glacial valley, with high rocky parallel sides, hanging valleys, and an irregular rocky floor. However, in Norwegian, it has a more general meaning and often refers to any long, narrow body of water, inlet, or channel.

The word fjord derives from the Old Norse fjǫrðr, meaning a "lake-like body of water used for passage" and is closely related to ferð, which means "traveling, ferrying, journey". Sounds familiar? Well, the English words ferry and fare have the same origin.

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A geyser is a hot spring that intermittently, sometimes at regular intervals, throws up a jet of hot water and steam in areas that are or were volcanic. We can find famous examples of geysers in the volcanic districts of Iceland and in the United States, for example, in Yellowstone National Park.

The English word geyser originated in the late 18th century and was borrowed from Geysir, which is the name of a specific hot spring in the valley of Haukadal, Iceland. In turn, geysir comes from the Old Norse term geysa, meaning "to gush".

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Jungle is a word brought home from India by the British in the 18th century. It derives from the Hindi and Marathi term jangal, which means desert, wasteland, or uncultivated ground. This land was frequently covered with scrub and tangled vegetation, including long grass.

In turn, jangal comes from the Sanskrit word jaṅgala, meaning rough and arid. Today, the term jungle is used popularly for any type of tropical forest with thick undergrowth.

Image: Jacob Lawler

A volcano is a rift or vent in the Earth’s crust through which molten material erupts in the form of hot lava, gases, volcanic ash, and dust. In the United States, there are about 170 potentially active volcanoes, including Mount St. Helens in southwestern Washington, the Lassen Volcanic Center in California, the Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming, and Kilauea in Hawaii.

The earliest known use of the word volcano in English dates from the early 1600s in the works of Samuel Purchas, a British compiler of travel and discovery writings. It comes from the Latin word Vulcan, the Ancient Roman god of fire. The name was first used by the Romans to refer to Mount Etna, an active volcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy.

Image: Marc Eggert

Tundra is the area comprising the barren plains of northern Canada, Alaska, and Eurasia. There's also an alpine tundra and an Antarctic tundra. It's a treeless region characterized by long, very cold winters and permafrost, where vegetation is restricted to mosses, lichens, and dwarf shrubs.

Since this particular biome includes vast areas of northern Russia, it makes sense that the word tundra has a Russian origin. It derives from the term tundar, from the Finno-Ugric languages of the Sami people, meaning "elevated wasteland, high-topped hill," or "a marshy plain".

Image: Hendrik Morkel

Nowadays, we use the word archipelago to refer to a group of islands scattered close to a sea. However, in Medieval Greek, archipelago was the proper name for the Aegean Sea, an arm of the Mediterranean where numerous large and small islands emerged from the clear blue waters.

Archipelago derives from the Ancient Greek arkhi, meaning "chief" and pélagos, "sea". The term was later applied to any sea over which numerous islands are dispersed, and more recently simply to the islands themselves.

Image: anaterate

Another geographic term we borrowed form Russian is steppe. Steppe refers to the treeless midlatitude grassland stretching from central Europe to southern Siberia in Asia. Steppes can also be found in other regions, such as Patagonia in South America, western Canada, the northern part of Mexico, and the Great Basin region in the United States.

The word was introduced in Western Europe by German geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt in the early 19th century. It derives from the German steppe, which in turn comes from the Russian step, meaning "flat grassy plain."

Image: Freysteinn G. Jonsson

Are you familiar with the Florida Keys? What about the Elbow Cays in the Bahamas? And Cayo Grande off the coast of Venezuela? Although they are spelled slightly differently, all these places respond to the same geographical feature. A cay or key is a low island of sand and coral fragments, built up by waves on a reef-flat drying at low water. Cays occur in tropical environments in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.

But where does the word come from? Cay derives from the Spanish word cayo, which originates from cairi, the Taíno word for "small island". The spelling key, most used in American English, was probably influenced by the Middle English word key, meaning "wharf" or from the Old French kai, which means "sand bank".

Image: Yegor Chuperka

In this article, we have learned about the origin of geographical terms whose etymology derives from Greek, Old Norse, Spanish, and Sanskrit. Now it’s the turn of Italian. A lagoon is a shallow area of salt or brackish coastal water completely or partly separated from the open sea by some more or less effective obstacle, such as a low sandbank.

The word lagoon derives from the Italian laguna, which refers to the waters around Venice. It was such a specific term that it was used in this way in English until the 17th century. Later, it was anglicized to lagune, to finally take the form we use today —lagoon— in the late 18th century at the hand of none other than Captain James Cook.

Some names stick around

From Table Tap Joe to Ziggy Stardust: Who are the best song characters?

Sometimes, a character is the perfect alter-ego to write a song about oneself without self-referencing so much. Other times, a character is just a character. Over the years, musicians have come up with lonely dreamers, fearless heroes, mysterious strangers, and even supernatural villains who have become just as famous as the songs themselves. Some were inspired by real people, others sprang entirely from imagination, but all of them left a lasting mark on music history. Which of these 12 do you remember?

Tom Waits has always had a soft spot for society's oddballs, and few are even stranger than Table Top Joe. Introduced on the 2002 album Alice, Joe is born with only a head and hands, yet grows into a brilliant piano player whose extraordinary talent earns him fame despite the odds stacked against him.

The song unfolds like a forgotten American folk tale, complete with references to Coney Island's legendary Dreamland amusement park and composer Igor Stravinsky. Although many listeners assume the story is based on an old carnival legend, Table Top Joe is entirely Tom Waits' own creation.

Few fictional musicians have ever become as famous as Ziggy Stardust. Introduced in 1972, Ziggy is an alien rock star sent to Earth shortly before humanity's end, only to be consumed by the very fame that makes him a savior to millions.

David Bowie blurred the line between fiction and reality by performing as Ziggy onstage for more than a year. When he unexpectedly announced Ziggy's retirement during a concert at London's Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, many fans believed the character, and perhaps Bowie himself, had truly reached the end of the story.

Tommy Walker isn't just the hero of a song, he's the central figure of one of rock music's first great operas. After witnessing a traumatic event as a child, Tommy becomes deaf, mute, and blind, yet somehow develops astonishing pinball skills that transform him into an unlikely celebrity.

Pete Townshend built an entire musical world around Tommy, exploring themes of trauma, faith, and redemption. First released in 1969, Tommy later became a hit film, a Broadway production, and one of the most influential concept albums ever recorded.

Johnny B. Goode is every aspiring musician's dream. Growing up in rural Louisiana with little more than a guitar and natural talent, he plays so brilliantly that listeners predict "his name will be in lights."

Chuck Berry based the character partly on himself and partly on pianist Johnnie Johnson. Originally described as a "colored boy," Johnny became a "country boy" in the final lyrics, making the song more likely to receive airplay during the segregation era. Nearly two decades later, Johnny's anthem would even travel into space aboard NASA's Voyager Golden Record.

Few fictional characters have captured loneliness as powerfully as Eleanor Rigby. She quietly moves through life unnoticed, while Father McKenzie delivers sermons that no one hears, creating one of popular music's saddest portraits of isolation.

Paul McCartney later explained that Eleanor's name came from actress Eleanor Bron and the Liverpool shop Rigby & Evens. The discovery of an actual Eleanor Rigby gravestone in Liverpool only deepened the song's mystique, though McCartney maintained the coincidence was unintentional.

Billie Jean may be one of pop music's most famous women, yet Michael Jackson insisted she wasn't a real person. Instead, she represented several women who falsely claimed that he had fathered their children during the height of the Jackson 5's fame.

Released in 1983 as part of Thriller, the song became a global phenomenon. It also provided the stage for Jackson's legendary moonwalk during Motown 25.

Unlike many legendary song characters, Stagger Lee actually existed. His real name was Lee Shelton, a St. Louis criminal who murdered Billy Lyons during an argument over a hat on Christmas Eve in 1895.

The shocking crime quickly entered American folklore through countless folk songs before Lloyd Price transformed it into a chart-topping hit in 1958. More than a century later, Stagger Lee remains one of the most enduring antiheroes in American music.

Tom Dooley was inspired by Thomas Dula, a Confederate veteran executed in North Carolina in 1868 after being convicted of murdering Laura Foster. His surname was locally pronounced "Dooley," giving the ballad its familiar title.

The Kingston Trio revived the old Appalachian folk song in 1958, turning it into an international hit and helping launch America's folk music revival.

When the narrator of "Lola" meets an intriguing stranger in a Soho nightclub, expectations quickly give way to surprise. Ray Davies crafted one of rock's earliest mainstream stories exploring gender ambiguity, decades before the topic entered popular conversation.

The recording rarely reached British radio. Because BBC rules prohibited commercial product names, Davies had to interrupt a U.S. tour and fly back to London simply to replace the lyric "Coca-Cola" with the now-famous "cherry cola."

Unlike most famous song characters, the Piano Man is really Billy Joel himself. Before becoming a superstar, Joel spent six months in 1972 and 1973 performing under the pseudonym Bill Martin at the Executive Room, a piano bar in Los Angeles, after becoming trapped in a bad recording contract. The song transforms those experiences into a bittersweet portrait of ordinary people searching for escape at the end of another week.

Joel has said that virtually every character in the song was based on a real person, from bartender John to "Paul, the real estate novelist" and Davy, who really was in the Navy. Yet the Piano Man himself became the story's most enduring character: a quiet observer who offers music as a brief refuge for dreamers, lonely souls, and regulars alike. More than fifty years after its 1973 release, "Piano Man" remains Billy Joel's signature song, and its title has effectively become his lifelong nickname.

Standing nearly seven feet tall and missing an arm, Amos Moses roams the Louisiana swamps hunting alligators. Jerry Reed filled the song with colorful Southern expressions and exaggerated storytelling that make Amos feel like an authentic folk legend.

Although fictional, Amos embodies the larger-than-life heroes found throughout American tall tales. His adventures turned the song into one of Reed's biggest crossover hits and secured Amos a permanent place among country music's greatest characters.

Big Bad John hardly says a word, but he doesn't have to. The towering coal miner earns everyone's respect through quiet strength before sacrificing his own life to save fellow workers when a mine collapses.

Jimmy Dean's 1961 ballad became a smash hit, winning a Grammy and inspiring several sequel songs. More than sixty years later, Big Bad John still stands as one of country music's defining working-class heroes.