Oceans   In anticipation of some ocean travel coming up shortly, I’d like to talk about oceans in general, then about each ocean in particular. So the question will be, in multiple choice form:

Is it a trick question? No, not exactly, but you won’t get a room of people to agree. While you ponder your response, I should point out again, that like lots of questions, there is both an objective answer and a subjective answer, something that I enjoy calling “dual reality”. My favorite example is what you see at the end of the day on the western horizon. Do we remain objective and say we are falling backward with the earth, so we can see the sun less and less, or do we allow ourselves to be subjective and say that it’s the sun that’s “going down”, and actually call it a sunset? We do both. So, for completeness, we need both the objective answer from that list as well as the subjective one.

Objective Answer Look at a globe. Other than lakes, look at the continuous nature of virtually all the waters of the earth, be they referred to as oceans or adjacent seas. We are the Water Planet, despite our avoiding the obvious and calling ourselves Earth. The objective answer to the question is that there is one ocean on earth, the World Ocean. Look at the map carefully until you’re adjusted to its unusual angle. You will then notice that all the lobes of the World Ocean, rather surprisingly, converge at one place, Antarctica, to the right of center on this map. The Atlantic lobe goes off to the upper left, the Indian lobe off to the upper right, and the Pacific lobe is at the bottom.

Subjective Answer But it’s precisely those lobes that bring us to our subjective answer. Since the lobes intertwine the continents, we want to identify the coasts of our continents, and refer to the three lobes of the World Ocean as though they were oceans in their own right. And thus they become just that in everyday usage. The lobe coming up from Antarctica between the Americas and Eurasia/Africa we call the Atlantic Ocean, the lobe coming up from Antarctica between Eurasia/Australia and the Americas we call the Pacific Ocean, and the lobe coming up from Antarctica between Africa, Eurasia, and Australia we call the Indian Ocean.

I am personally completely satisfied with this subjective answer, but to play the devil’s advocate, we’ll discuss the two problems that arise. Is there also an Arctic Ocean? Is there also a Southern Ocean? Readers will each have to make their own decisions on this one, as I have made mine. But first let’s look into two words.

Ocean versus Sea   Most European languages have two different words, one like “ocean” and one like “sea”, but we’ll limit ourselves here to English. Most people accept the two words at face value, but there’s a marked usage difference in daily speech. “Ocean” is a classical term, from Greek, and almost the same in most European languages, while “sea” (and its equivalents) is more of a home-grown word with far more use within the language. Even if you’re on an ocean, you can get seasick. There’s no such word as “oceansick”. Sailors sailing the oceans “go to sea”, they don’t “go to ocean”. Here’s a limited list of words and expressions that use the word “sea” when actually referring moreso to the ocean:

And there are more. None of those words use “ocean” when clearly referring to the ocean, as in “sea level”. Some words can appear as twins: seafront/oceanfront; seaview/oceanview, sea breeze/ocean breeze. We usually say “seaport” and only rarely “ocean port”. “Ocean” is exclusive in far fewer words, such as ocean liner and oceanography, where “sea” cannot be used. But the point is that, outside of proper names, there is a lot of flexibility in using the two words, and the home-grown word “sea” in everyday expressions outpaces the Classical Greek-derived “ocean”.

The concept of seven seas, as in to “sail the seven seas”, has been around for four millennia, since the days of ancient Sumer. Given that there are well over 100 bodies of water classified as seas, while different civilizations may have had their own “seven seas” in mind, the term is today metaphorical, and refers to sailing all the world’s oceans--or the World Ocean.

But in proper names, it’s a different story. For reasons discussed further below about the ancient Greeks, if it’s big, it’s an ocean; if it’s smaller, it’s a sea. More precisely, seas are sections or branches of oceans.

For a few examples, the Indian Ocean has, among others, the Arabian Sea, which I had a beautiful view of from the far side of the United Arab Emirates; the map also shows the Red Sea. The Pacific Ocean has, among many others, the Coral Sea, whose Great Barrier Reef I visited out of Cairns. The Atlantic Ocean seems to have by far the most major seas, and even their seas have sub-seas. Just to mention the largest, we have the Caribbean Sea, hidden away behind the Antilles; the more open Norwegian Sea, shown here with others, including the more land-bound North Sea and Baltic Sea, and most land-bound of all, the branch of the Atlantic Ocean we know as the Mediterranean Sea, which is particularly rife with sub-seas.

The most unusual sea in the world has no shorelines. It’s the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean--which is what makes it so unusual. It’s the only sea not delineated by land masses, but instead is delineated by several ocean currents, most notably the Gulf Stream on its west side. The Sargasso sea is the home of, and named for, the Sargassum seaweed, which floats en masse on its surface and also helps delineate the area of the Sea.

Columbus commented on the Sargasso Sea in his log, making him falsely believe he was near land. Legends of seaweed trapping ships have been debunked, since the seaweed patches actually prove to be very small and no hazard at all to navigation (more of a problem was the variability of the trade winds, resulting in what sailors called the doldrums). Giving its unusual nature, novels have been written about the Sargasso Sea portraying it as an area of mystery in the Atlantic, reminiscent of Umberto Eco’s use of the IDL Day Line in the Pacific (2012/3). Furthermore, Jules Verne (!!!) described the Sargasso Sea, when he had Captain Nemo and his Nautilus sail under its seaweed-covered surface in his 1870 Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea).

[Before concluding this point and getting back to the Arctic “Ocean”, some geographical misnomers should be pointed out involving the word “sea”. All the following are landlocked lakes, and, although the water may be brackish, they are not seas, even though we call them that. Southeast of Russia are the Caspian Sea and Aral Sea; in Israel the Dead Sea and Sea of Galilee; in the US the Salton Sea in California. The Great Salt Lake in Utah fits into this category, but is the only one properly named a lake. It should also be noted that two alternate names of the Sea of Galilee are Lake Tiberias and Lake Kinneret, both using the proper designation “lake”.]

Arctic “Ocean” Note the quotes I place when talking about the so-called Arctic “Ocean”. Most people, including most scientists, to refer to it as an ocean, but I join the minority who disagree, even though I didn’t point that out when we were discussing Arctic climate and polar bears in Churchill. The reason for this is the evidence is rather clear to me that it’s not an ocean at all, but a sea of the Atlantic Ocean.

Oceans are almost by definition large, and if this were an ocean, it would be the smallest in the world, even smaller than the so-called Southern Ocean. Oceans are usually known for volcanism, and have lengthy underwater ridges rising up and trenches plunging into the deep. This ocean has none of that. The deepest point in the Pacific--and the world--is the Mariana Trench at -10,994 m (-36,070 ft). The deepest point in the Atlantic comes next, the Puerto Rico Trench at -8,648 m (-28,374 ft). The Indian Ocean has the third deepest point, the Java Trench at -7,125 m (-23,376 ft).

The Arctic “Ocean” Sea has no trenches. It’s deepest point is reported variously as the Eurasian Basin at -5,450 m (-17,881 ft) or the Fram Basin at a mere -4,665 m (-15,305). Either of these figures compare more favorably to the Mediterranean Sea, whose Calypso Deep is -5,267 m (-17,280 ft) rather than to the oceans.

The oceanographers that I agree with do not consider the relatively small, relatively shallow Arctic “Ocean” as a proper ocean because it’s surrounded so closely by land, similar to the Mediterranean Sea. It has limited exchange of water with the genuine oceans, notably the Bering Strait with the Pacific. If it were separate from the Atlantic, it would need arbitrary “borders” drawn on either side of Greenland and Iceland over to Norway (see above map), and consequently, just like the Mediterranean Sea, should be considered one of the many seas of the Atlantic Ocean called the Arctic Sea. Since that term is relatively unfamiliar, I’ll refer to it as the Arctic (“Ocean”) Sea, and will consider references to an Arctic Ocean as involving a misnomer, similar to the lake known as the Caspian Sea.

Look at this map of the North Atlantic lying between North America and Eurasia, and note its seas protruding westward into the Americas and eastward into Eurasia. Then consider the Arctic Sea similarly extending northward, also between North America and Eurasia, into the Arctic Sea.

“Southern” Ocean In this case I put the word “southern” in quotes, since there is so much more disbelief that this ocean exists. But we have to divide this discussion into two parts, one for the non-Australian case, and the other for the Australian case. The Australians have an interesting claim, for which I can attempt a solution, one that I like, anyway.

Speaking now to the non-Australian case, let me point out that in recent times, a Southern Ocean has been proposed, surrounding Antarctica. What has been done is that, where the southern portions of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans meet Antarctica, pieces of each have been cobbled together to form a “new” ocean. (Adding insult to injury, Antarctica is just the area that’s the apex of the World Ocean.) This “new” ocean has no land border whatsoever on its northern side. It’s arbitrarily defined as the 60th parallel South, as shown on the map. One argument in its favor is that there is an Antarctic Circumpolar Current that dominates this area. That’s all well and good, but the other example of currents defining a body of water is the Sargasso Sea, and that’s a sea, not an ocean. Like the Sargasso Sea, call these waters the “Southern Sea”, and I might agree a little, but not as an ocean.

You may already be smirking. Geographers, too, disagree as to just where the proposed northern boundary should be, as well as if this “ocean” exists at all. I don’t accept this concept at all. It’s especially likely that it’s been proposed as a southern parallel to the Arctic “Ocean”, which is ironic, given our above discussion.

The Australians have their own argument for, and a different concept of, a Southern Ocean, and they do have a valid reason for concern. What bodies of land reach to the south? South America reaches the furthest, but Chile is happy to face westward to the Pacific and Argentina to face east to the Atlantic, neither having any significant south coast. South Africa faces south, but it’s satisfied as being at the convergence of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. New Zealand points south, but doesn’t have a significant south coast, and faces the Pacific to the east and to the west, the Tasman Sea, an arm of the Pacific.

So it comes down to Australia as being the only southern country with a significant south coast. The arch of this huge coast is called the Great Australian Bight (2010/27), which most of us consider an extension of the Indian Ocean. But the Aussies don’t.

From their very beginning, Australia has considered its south coast to be on the Southern Ocean, which, by Australian definition, even extends all the way to Antarctica. This is an 1863 map of Australia with period borders, old enough so that most of the Outback is still marked “Unexplored Regions”, yet still, the waters off the south coast are marked “Southern Ocean”, and not a continuation of the Indian Ocean. It really has to be considered that this Southern Ocean is not the same one as the one above, which, if you accept its existence, only extends north to 60° S, while Adelaide on Australia’s south coast is much further north, at 35° S. Cape Town is almost at the same latitude, at 35° S, yet South Africa makes no claim to bordering any “Southern Ocean”. Australia remains adamant on the subject, and claims to speak for New Zealand as well as being located on “its” Southern Ocean, although there’s no indication that the Kiwis follow suit. Also worth mentioning is Cape Leeuwin, the southwesternmost point of Australia (2010/23) which is claimed to be the point where “the Indian and Southern Oceans” meet.

My least favorite personal solution to this dilemma is a modified status-quo solution. We can call the waters south of the Australian mainland and west of Tasmania the Southern Ocean, but modify the claim that it reaches all the way to Antarctica as being rather far-fetched. Let’s consider it just a reasonable oval running as far as a bit south of Tasmania. What we are doing here is describing more of a sea of the Indian Ocean, but we can consider “Southern Ocean” a minor misnomer, rather like the Caspian Sea being a lake.

An improvement on that solution is to really call a spade a spade, and to rename that oval of water the Southern Sea. This, to me, is quite satisfactory. “South Sea” would also be a thought, parallel to Europe’s North Sea, but then it would sound too much like you’re talking about the “South Seas” of the Pacific.

But my favorite solution to this is to be specific, and not worry about southern directionality. If the large sea west of Norway is the Norwegian Sea (see map above), then I propose that this large oval south of Australia become the Australian Sea. Not many countries have seas named after them, and this should be a coveted prize for Australia. The only others that come to mind are the Sea of Japan and both the East China Sea and South China Sea, but those are too wordy. Also, those seas are more boxed in.

With this solution, Cape Leeuwin would be the meeting place of the Indian Ocean and the Australian Sea (of the Indian Ocean), just as New Zealand lies between the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea (of the Pacific Ocean). Also, the Great Ocean Road southwest of Melbourne (2010/22), would still be an ocean road, on the Australian Sea of the Indian Ocean.

Thus my personal answers to the first question above is that there is, objectively, one ocean, the World Ocean, and subjectively three, in order of size, the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. The Arctic (“Ocean”) Sea is a northern branch of the Atlantic, the Southern Ocean¹ makes little sense and doesn’t exist and the Southern Ocean² should be considered the Australian Sea. For readers to contemplate their own personal solutions, watch this alternating gif map of the world (that’s South America and Antarctica in the center).

Oceanus   When asked about the mythological god of the sea, most people will name Neptune. He’s the Roman version of that god, and in the older Greek tradition, his counterpart is Poseidon. But few people will come up with Oceanus (o.SI.a.nus [SI rhyming with SKI]), the god of the ocean.

Let’s do this in chronological order. Some scholars believe that Oceanus originally represented all bodies of salt water, the Mediterranean Sea and also the Atlantic Ocean. But then those two bodies, one more familiar and one more unknown beyond Gibraltar, began to be differentiated, in many ways, the same as the sea/smaller, ocean/larger distinction is still made. At that point, the Greeks began to consider the newcomer Poseidon (Neptune) the god of the sea (literally, just the sea, not the ocean), while Oceanus was delegated to the more distant ocean.

As a matter of fact, “Ocean” was a proper name, just like “Mediterranean” still is. In a sense, it was the Ocean Sea. If we were to follow that tradition, naming it the Atlantic Ocean is giving it two names. The Greeks were ahead of their time about the Ocean, since they believed it to be an enormous river encircling the world, as here in Homer--very similar to the concept of the World Ocean. (“Oceanus Fluvius” on the map is “Ocean River”.)

We have two examples here of Oceanus being depicted in art. Some readers will be familiar with the Pergamon Altar (click to enlarge for detail), in the Pergamon Museum on Museum Island in Berlin, which is the most-visited museum in Germany. Pergamon was an ancient Greek city in what is today the westernmost part of Turkey. This detail from the altar shows Oceanus on the right, with a fish-tail.

A lot more familiar is a famous depiction in Rome. This is La Fontana di Trevi / Trevi Fountain, and yes, standing right in the middle is Oceanus, just as in “Three Coins in the Fountain”.

Indian Ocean   By pure coincidence, if you alphabetize the three oceans, you have their order of discovery--a far better word is awareness--by Western (European) culture. That the Atlantic was the first ocean known in Europe is no surprise, since it lies on Europe’s doorstep, and the seas encircling Europe are all branches of the Atlantic. This entire series of postings is leading up to a trip in the Atlantic, and so we’re going to leave the discussion of the Atlantic to last, in the next posting. Here we’ll discuss the two oceans that Europe became aware of after the Atlantic.

We start with the Indian Ocean. The map shows its placement between Africa, Asia, and Australia, including south of Australia up to Tasmania, not accepting Australia’s claim to a Southern Ocean. But the map does make allowance for a claim of a “Southern Ocean” surrounding Antarctica. You may or may not think that lopping off the Indian Ocean before it reaches Antarctica makes sense; I don’t.

The Indian Ocean is the third largest, comprising about a fifth of the World Ocean. The Atlantic is a little larger, comprising about a fourth. But the Pacific is the largest by far, comprises almost half. In other words, the Pacific is roughly about the size of the other two combined.

How can we say the Indian Ocean was the second one Europeans became aware of (“discovered”)? Just start with the image of classical antiquity, before any knowledge of the Americas, Australia, or Antarctica, when the Afro-Eurasian land mass was the known world. Travelers, mostly merchants, went from Europe to Asia via the many routes of the Silk Road. The land routes are shown here in red, and the water routes are in blue. The water routes also were the spice trade routes to the Indies.

In 2010/10 “The Indies”, we discussed the spice trade to the Indies, led by the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. It should be pointed out that, in some periods of history, crossing through the Middle East became a dangerous proposition, and so to reach South Asia (“India”, also “the Indies”), ships began circumnavigating Africa instead, leading to the founding of Cape Town and South Africa. Travel east both via the Middle East or via Cape Town (which led to Dirk Hartog’s accidentally discovering the west coast of Australia), shows that the Indian Ocean is the only one whose name is directional--it tells you that the Indian Ocean is the route eastward to India. But just what is meant by “India”? Probably not what most think.

When discussing Singapore (2010/5), we mentioned that Singapore and the rest of the Malay Peninsula was considered part of the British Raj in India, even though it’s further east. I now see that that custom long predates the British Empire, and have proof dating back to Ptolemy. We discussed him from a mathematical point of view (2009/19), but mentioned that his was also a geographer. We are about to find that, just as “China” was (and sometimes still is) used as a synonym for all of East Asia, historically “India” was used as a synonym for all of South and Southwestern Asia, including the Malay Peninsula, Indo-China, and the Indies.

This is the Ptolemy World Map (click to enlarge), reconstructed from his “Geographia”, circa 150 CE (=AD). On the left is Europe and the Mediterranean, the Nile and the Arabian Peninsula. An oversized Sri Lanka (labeled Taprobane) points at India between the Indus River on the left (today in Pakistan) and the Ganges River in eastern India on the right. The Malay Peninsula is labeled Aurea Chersonesus, and Sinae is north of it, which is China (think of “Sino-”). But there are two important terms he uses here, which were also used historically. India intra Gangem and India extra Gangem (Fluvium is “river”). India intra Gangem (India within the Ganges) was the designation for India proper, within the subcontinent. India extra Gangem (India beyond the Ganges) was the designation for all the places beyond, the Malay Peninsula, Indo-China, and the Indies (today, essentially, Indonesia). Note how many of the places “beyond the Ganges” still use “Ind(o)-” as part of their name. Thus the Indian Ocean leads the sailor eastward to a Greater India, essentially all of South and Southeast Asia. In a sense, “Indian Ocean” can be read to indicate “Asian Ocean”.

Look at a more modern map showing this. “Greater India” and “India Major”, terms that fell out of favor only into the 20C, identify essentially the traditional India Cultural Zone. Dark orange shows historic India with adjacent countries on the subcontinent (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan). Light orange shows other countries culturally linked to India from Southeast Asia to Indonesia. Yellow shows regions with significant Indian influence, notably Afghanistan, Tibet, Yunnan Province (of China), and the Philippines.

Given the above, it’s highly misleading to say Columbus was “going to India”, because everyone pictures today’s India. He was looking for the Indies, for a better route for trading those same spices we discussed. You could say he was looking for Indonesia (although it’s anachronistic to put it that way) to give a better idea of where he was going. Realizing that, it’s incredible that there just so happened to be a grouping of islands he mistook for the (East) Indies, and named them the West Indies.

Pacific Ocean   The Pacific was the last of the three oceans that Europeans became aware of. The story makes me smile, because I was recently talking with a friend about misconceptions we all have as kids, and this one came to mind. After being told that “Balboa discovered the Pacific”, I took an expected americo-centric view and pictured him hiking across the Rockies, reaching California, and looking at the ocean. Needless to say, it didn’t happen that way, not the least reason being, he did it in 1513, long before Europeans were trudging across North America.

So where did he do it? A good guess would be he first saw the Pacific at the shortest place to cross the Americas. Another clue would be to realize that Columbus didn’t exactly “discover America” in the sense most people think. What he found were the Caribbean islands, which is where the Spanish set down their base for a very long time. Putting together “Caribbean base” plus “narrow land crossing” and you might come to picture Panama--and you’d be right. Add to that the fact that Panamanian currency is to this day called the Balboa, and you know you’ve got it right.

The Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, setting out from the Spanish base in the Caribbean (“West Indies”), followed stories he had heard about another sea on the other side of Panama. Where had such stories come from? The local native tribes were well aware of their own geography and passed the information on. The landed on the Caribbean (Atlantic) side of Panama, and picked up information as they progressed from tribe to tribe. Curiously, Balboa “discovered” the Pacific twice, a couple of days apart. He and his men came across a mountain range, and their information was that the other sea could be seen from atop the mountains. Balboa wanted to be the first, and went ahead. On 25 September 1513, just 21 years after Columbus’s first voyage across the Atlantic in 1492, he reached a summit and saw on the distant horizon the waters of the Pacific. His men followed afterward to see the undiscovered sea.

The follow-up “discovery” came two days later, when a group of the men came down from the mountains and reached the shoreline. They took a canoe for a short trip, thus becoming the first Europeans to navigate the Pacific. Balboa later followed, walked knee-deep into the ocean, raised his hands, and declared the “new” sea and all adjoining lands (!!!) for the kings of Spain. A flippant remark might be that someone should tell the Asians that they’re in Spain, but then one reflects about the Philippines having been considered to be on the same side of the IDL Day Line as the Americas for so long, one can picture it as on the opposite side of this “Spanish domain” from the Americas.

The men had traveled more than 110 km (68 mi) across Panama, and Balboa came up with two names for the “new” waters. He called the bay San Miguel, since they named it on Saint Michael’s Day. And what he named the sea is most interesting. He called it in Spanish Mar del Sur (South Sea).

To understand why, we need to look at the geography of Panama. We tend to figure the Americas on a north-south axis, which is false; North and South America lie on a diagonal axis that’s far more northwest-southeast. This is particularly noticeable in Central America, but when reaching Panama, all preconceptions go haywire. This is best seen from this map of Balboa’s journey in Panama. The red line shows their trip going, including the canoe trip, and the blue line is the trip returning. Beyond that, notice that Panama runs west-east, totally different from how most of us picture it. Therefore, Balboa left the Caribbean, to the north, traveled south, and arrived on Panama’s south shore, where he logically named what he found the South Sea.

[Almost exactly four centuries after Balboa, the Panama Canal was dug in the area in the center of this map, which means it runs, not E-W, and not even N-S, but from the Caribbean (Atlantic) to the Pacific, northwest to southeast!]

The Spanish term Mar del Sur is singular, and its translation in most languages is singular as well: GE Südmeer, IT Mare del Sud; DU Zuidzee; RU Южное море / Yuzhnoye Morye. But English has a weird penchant for using plurals in some expressions where they don’t make sense. You can say South Sea, but actually more common is South Seas.

This quirk of English isn’t limited to single items in everyday life that are treated as plurals, such as scissors, pliers, tweezers, pants, shorts, even (judge’s) robes. It’s also frequent in geographical terms. There’s just one strait in the Strait of Gibraltar, but it’s commonly referred to as the Straits of Gibraltar. We also have unnecessary plurals when talking about walking in the woods, looking at the skies, heavens, or waters of the ocean. We talk about being “on the high seas”--and also talk about the South Seas.

While Balboa meant his South Sea to refer to the entire Pacific, it’s doesn’t do that anymore, but the term continues to exist. Since most of the Pacific’s islands are in its southern half, south of the equator, we tend to think of the South Seas--with its South Sea islands--only being in the southern hemisphere. That’s a slightly-in-error heritage dating to Balboa in 1513.

So where did the Pacific get its current name? It wasn’t named in Spanish, but in Portuguese. Eight years after Balboa, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan on a 1521 expedition encountered favorable winds when he reached the ocean and called it Mar Pacífico in Portuguese (OK, it’s the same in Spanish), which is essentially “peaceful sea”.

Note two things here. First is the constant use of “sea” for all bodies of water. As we said, it’s a far more frequent term than “ocean”. It apparently took a while until “ocean” gained more frequent use. Second is the word “pacific”. It’s related to “pacify” and “peaceful”, but since it now has become the name of an ocean, it’s very hard to use it any more in its original meaning. If you were to talk about “the pacific waters of the Atlantic” people would stare at you. You have to replace it with synonyms like “peaceful” or “still”.

Which brings us to the next point. The names of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are all recognizable in other languages, since the names are very similar:

The Pacific is the only one that varies according to language (I speak of course only about European languages here.) Some use local variations of “peaceful, still, calm”, others call it the Great Ocean.

Recognizable are: GE Pazifischer Ozean (Pazifik); FR Océan Pacifique; IT Oceano Pacifico; SP & PORT Océano Pacífico.

In all Germanic languages we have the word “still” with the same meaning. It’s possible in German to use Stiller Ozean (as we saw on the IDL Day Line map). Dutch can also use Stille Oceaan; one Swedish choice is Stilla Oceanen (Pacifiken). Polish can use Ocean Spokojny (Pacyfik). Russian uses Тихий океан / Tikhii okean, and Croatian Tihi Ocean.

As for Great Ocean, it’s possible to find in German Grosser Ozean; Dutch can use Grote Oceaan; Swedish, Stora oceanen; Polish, Ocean Wielki.

So let’s finally look at a map of the Pacific Ocean, encircled by Australia, Asia, the Americas, and Antarctica (although this map leaves room for a “southern ocean” at Antarctica). We can’t vouch for it being pacific/still/calm (and anyway, the victims of the recent tsunamis, such as in Japan, would argue with that), but it surely is the Great Ocean, with almost half of the Earth’s ocean surface and one-third of Earth’s total surface.