A little Levantine

[muckefuck]

Part of the rambling multihour conversation in the car on the way down to STL was a debate about the origins of the term "Levant" in the sense of "the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean". bunj was arguing that it was anachronistic to use it for the Era of the Crusades since it isn't attested with this meaning in English before 1497; the only term he found in his original sources, he told us, was trémière (from Latin trans mare "across [the] sea"). e. and on, on the other hand, pointed out that cognates of Levant had been in use in Romance languages for centuries before then with the general meaning of "east", but we couldn't provide a date for when it acquired its specific geographic identification.

I've since had time to do a little more sleuthing and have uncovered some interesting facts:

• In French, levant first occurs with the meaning of "east" in the Chanson de Roland, but it's the 15th century before it comes to mean "the Levantine countries".
• Similarly, llevant in the sense of "east" is found in the Catalan works of Raymond Llull, but the first attestation of a specific geographical application is a chronicle from 1455.
• In Italian, however, Levante begins to be used in this sense from "around the 13th-14th centuries", according to the Vocabolario Treccani.
• A survey of our various dictionaries of Mediaeval Latin shows that both transmare and levans seem to be sparsely attested, but there is a citation in the Niermeyer of "Genova, XIII [cent.]" for the latter with the meaning we're interested in.

So it does seem to be an expression that comes into use only at the end of the Crusader period after all.

Comments

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

The generic term for the Levant in the Crusader period, from my own spotty reading, is Outremer.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Ah, perhaps this is what bunj was saying and I just misheard him. The OED traces Outremer in the sense of "the Crusader states" back to the 13th century; the Latin form ultra mare is attested even earlier, but it's unclear if this is with the same geographical reference or not.

[bunj.livejournal.com]

It was, in fact, what bunj was saying. I got it from Villehardouin and Joinville: both French, both writing at the time.