East and west both come from one ancient root meaning to shine red
The English words east and west trace back to a single Proto-Indo-European root for glowing red: one for the dawn, one for the evening. South is tied to the Sun itself. And in the night sky, east and west swap sides, because astronomers look up at the map instead of down.
The four cardinal points, north, east, south and west, correspond to compass bearings of 0°, 90°, 180° and 270°, measured clockwise from north. Halfway between them lie the intercardinal directions, northeast at 45°, southeast at 135°, southwest at 225° and northwest at 315°, each the opposite of the one across the dial. Splitting further gives 16 named points, and a third round yields 32, with names such as north by east and east-northeast. Bearings like these underpin trigonometric navigation and GPS receivers, and adding up and down produces the six directions of three-dimensional coordinates.
In astronomy, a body's North point is the spot on its edge nearest the north celestial pole, and going clockwise around the disc one meets West, South and then East, the reverse of a terrestrial map. East in the sky means higher right ascension, so of two stars beneath the North Star, the eastern one appears on the left.
The English words have deep roots. North goes back to a Proto-Indo-European term meaning submerged or to the left of the rising sun; east comes from the word for dawn and west from the word for evening, both from a root meaning to shine red that also gave Latin vesper and Greek Hesperus. South derives from a root meaning to seethe, related to Sun, making it the region of the Sun. During the Migration Period these Germanic terms displaced Latin borealis, australis, occidentalis and orientalis in the Romance languages.
Cultures have layered other meanings on top. The Greeks personified directional winds as the Anemoi, and pre-modern Europeans named between 8 and 32 compass points after Mediterranean winds, linking southeast with the Sahara's Sirocco. Many Asian traditions add the centre as a fifth point, as in pre-modern China and among Turkic, Tibetan and Ainu peoples; the Chinese system ties into the I Ching, the Wu Xing and the five visible planets. Directions often carry colours, and in Chinese east is qīng, a single word spanning green and blue, echoed in the name of Qingdao, Green Island, on the east coast.
Source: Cardinal direction
