Moors and Marrakech

The weather in England is, frankly, deplorable. So I've booked a ticket to Marrakech in Morocco, only to find that they're the same place, etymologically speaking.

Algeria is named after the city of Algiers (from the Arabic Al-Jazair "the islands"). Tunisia is named after the city of Tunis (which probably means something, but nobody can decide what). And Morocco is named after Marrakech (from the Arabic Maghrib-Al-Aqsa "the far west").

But wait (I hear you shriek), why did the As in Marrakech turn to the Os in Morocco? And why wasn't it named after Tangiers? And...

Very well, Tangiers had already given its name to a fruit called the tangerine, and anyway Marrakech used to be the capital. As for the As to Os, they're much more fun and will get you straight to the Steve Miller Band.

The French keep the As. They call it Maroc. And the Germans call it Marokko. But the English got terribly confused by Othello, and other Moors.

You see for years in English, the inhabitants of North Africa have been known as Moors, who were Moorish. So when a country got called Morocco, the English (who had just been watching some Shakespeare) decided that it must be named after the Moors and altered the spelling to make it look a little more like Moor-occo, which is what we blithely assumed it was.

But where does Moor come from? Well, once upon a time, during the Roman Empire, there was a province called Mauritania, and a chap from that province was called a Maurus, and hence Moor. And the odd thing is that even though Roman Mauritania was almost exactly where modern Morocco is, the words have nothing to do with each other (except in the English hybrid Morocco).

But it goes further! You see the English thought, for some reason, that their traditional folk dancing had originated amongst the Moors, hence Morris Dancing, which is really Moorish Dancing.

Moreover, there's a common first name meaning From Mauritania. Just as Adrian means from the Adriatic Sea, so all Maurices (and Morrises) should come from Mauritania.

Of course, they don't. For example, Maurice Prince of Orange was born in Dillenburg in Germany, and became Stadtholder of the Netherlands. That's why when Dutch sailors arrived at a little island in the Indian Ocean previously called Dina Arobi, they renamed it, in their prince's honour, Mauritius.

So, that's how you link Morocco, Marrakech, Mauritania, Moors, Morris Dancing, Mauritius, a novel by E.M. Forster and a song by the Steve Miller Band.

Of course, the second I'd booked my ticket to Marrakech, the weather forecast was changed and next week looks cold there too. Will we never be set free?

As a final titbit, the phrase "in Morocco" used to be a euphemism for naked.