NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Why four cardinal compass points?
From: Stephen Davies
Date: 2026 Sep 30, 09:52 -0700
From: Stephen Davies
Date: 2026 Sep 30, 09:52 -0700
In Welsh, gogledd (north) means, roughly on the left and de (south) means on the right de is the Welsh for right), that's because the key direction is dwyrain (east) which means rise into view, so that's the default direction you're facing, gorllewin (west) means setting or descending. The Celts were an early Iron Age culture, first recorded about 1200BCE. I'd add that in the earliest Chinese system there were five cardinal direction - N, S, E, W and Centre. Oh, and the pre-western influence Chinese circle was (navigationally and for feng shui purposes) divided into up to 72 sectors totalling 365.25 units (du - also the modern word for degree). That is, the circle tracked the solar year, more or less.
stephen D
