
The four cardinal directions or cardinal points are the four main
compass directions:
north (N),
south (S),
east (E), and
west (W). The corresponding
azimuth
An azimuth (; from ) is the horizontal angle from a cardinal direction, most commonly north, in a local or observer-centric spherical coordinate system.
Mathematically, the relative position vector from an observer ( origin) to a point ...
s (
clockwise horizontal angle from north) are 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°.
The four ordinal directions or intercardinal directions are northeast (NE), southeast (SE), southwest (SW), and northwest (NW).
The corresponding azimuths are 45°, 135°, 225°, and 315°.
The intermediate direction of every pair of neighboring cardinal and intercardinal directions is called a secondary intercardinal direction. These eight shortest points in the
compass rose shown to the right are:
# West-northwest (WNW)
# North-northwest (NNW)
# North-northeast (NNE)
# East-northeast (ENE)
# East-southeast (ESE)
# South-southeast (SSE)
# South-southwest (SSW)
# West-southwest (WSW)
Points between the cardinal directions form the
points of the compass
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, Radius, radially arrayed compass directions (or Azimuth#In navigation, azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A ''compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, ...
. Arbitrary
horizontal directions may be indicated by their
azimuth
An azimuth (; from ) is the horizontal angle from a cardinal direction, most commonly north, in a local or observer-centric spherical coordinate system.
Mathematically, the relative position vector from an observer ( origin) to a point ...
angle value.
Determination
Additional points
Azimuth
The directional names are routinely associated with ''azimuths'', the
angle of rotation (in
degrees) in the
unit circle over the
horizontal plane. It is a necessary step for
navigation
Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the motion, movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navig ...
al calculations (derived from
trigonometry) and for use with
Global Positioning System (GPS)
receivers. The four cardinal directions correspond to the following degrees of a compass:
* North (N): 0° = 360°
* East (E): 90°
* South (S): 180°
* West (W): 270°
Intercardinal directions
The intercardinal (intermediate, or, historically, ordinal) directions are the four intermediate compass directions located halfway between each pair of cardinal directions.
* Northeast (NE), 45°, halfway between north and east, is the opposite of southwest.
* Southeast (SE), 135°, halfway between south and east, is the opposite of northwest.
* Southwest (SW), 225°, halfway between south and west, is the opposite of northeast.
* Northwest (NW), 315°, halfway between north and west, is the opposite of southeast.
Subintercardinal directions
The eight above listed directional names have been further compounded known as secondary intercardinal directions, resulting in a total of 16 named points evenly spaced around the compass. But there exist even tertiary intercardinal directions, resulting in a total of 32 named points evenly spaced around the compass: north (N), north by east (NbE), north-northeast (NNE), northeast by north (NEbN), northeast (NE), northeast by east (NEbE), east-northeast (ENE), east by north (EbN), east (E), etc.
Beyond geography
''Cardinal directions'' or ''cardinal points'' may sometimes be extended to include
vertical position (
elevation
The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...
,
altitude
Altitude is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum (geodesy), datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context (e.g., aviation, geometr ...
,
depth):
north and
south,
east and
west, up and down; or mathematically the six directions of the x-, y-, and z-axes in
three-dimensional Cartesian coordinates.
Topographic maps include elevation, typically via
contour line
A contour line (also isoline, isopleth, isoquant or isarithm) of a Function of several real variables, function of two variables is a curve along which the function has a constant value, so that the curve joins points of equal value. It is a ...
s.
Alternatively,
elevation angle may be combined with cardinal direction (or, more generally, arbitrary azimuth angle) to form a local
spherical coordinate system.
In astronomy
In
astronomy, the ''cardinal points'' of an
astronomical body as seen in the sky are four points defined by the directions toward which the
celestial poles lie relative to the center of the disk of the object in the sky.
A line (a
great circle on the
celestial sphere) from the center of the disk to the
North celestial pole will intersect the edge of the body (the "
limb") at the North point. The North point will then be the point on the limb that is closest to the North celestial pole. Similarly, a line from the center to the South celestial pole will define the South point by its intersection with the limb. The points at right angles to the North and South points are the East and West points. Going around the disk clockwise from the North point, one encounters in order the West point, the South point, and then the East point. This is opposite to the order on a terrestrial map because one is looking up instead of down.
Similarly, when describing the location of one astronomical object relative to another, "north" means closer to the North celestial pole, "east" means at a higher
right ascension, "south" means closer to the South celestial pole, and "west" means at a lower right ascension. If one is looking at two stars that are below the North Star, for example, the one that is "east" will actually be further to the left.
Germanic origin of names
During the
Migration Period, the
Germanic names for the cardinal directions entered the
Romance languages, where they replaced the
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
names ''borealis'' (or ''septentrionalis'') with north, ''australis'' (or ''meridionalis'') with south, ''occidentalis'' with west and ''orientalis'' with east. It is possible that some northern people used the Germanic names for the intermediate directions. Medieval Scandinavian orientation would thus have involved a 45 degree rotation of cardinal directions.
*''north'' (
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...
''*norþ-'') from the
proto-Indo-European *''nórto-s'' 'submerged' from the root *''ner-'' 'left, below, to the left of the rising sun' whence comes the
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
name ''
Nereus''.
*''east'' (''*aus-t-'') from the word for
dawn. The proto-Indo-European form is *''austo-s'' from the root *''aues''- 'shine (red)'.
[entries 86-7 of the Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch] See ''
Ēostre
''Ēostre'' ()Sievers 1901 p. 98Robert Barnhart, Barnhart, Robert K. ''The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology'' (1995) . is an List of Anglo-Saxon deities, Anglo-Saxon goddess mentioned by Bede in his 8th century work ''The Reckoning of ...
''.
*''south'' (''*sunþ-''), derived from proto-Indo-European *''sú-n-to-s'' from the root *''seu''- 'seethe, boil'. Cognate with this root is the word ''
Sun'', thus "the region of the Sun".
*''west'' (''*wes-t-'') from a word for "evening". The proto-Indo-European form is *''uestos'' from the root *ues- 'shine (red)', itself a form of *''aues''-.
Cognate with the root are the
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
words ''
vesper'' and ''
vesta'' and the
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
''
Hestia'', ''
Hesperus'' and ''
Hesperides''.
Cultural variations
In many regions of the world, prevalent winds change direction seasonally, and consequently many cultures associate specific named
winds with cardinal and intercardinal directions. For example,
classical Greek culture characterized these winds as
Anemoi.
In
pre-modern Europe more generally, between eight and 32
points of the compass
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, Radius, radially arrayed compass directions (or Azimuth#In navigation, azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A ''compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, ...
– cardinal and intercardinal directions – were given names. These often corresponded to the directional winds of the
Mediterranean Sea (for example, southeast was linked to the ''
Sirocco'', a wind from the Sahara).
Particular
colors are associated in some traditions with the cardinal points. These are typically "
natural colors" of human perception rather than optical
primary colors.
Many cultures, especially in
Asia
Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...
, include the center as a fifth cardinal point.
Northern Eurasia
Central Asian,
Eastern European and
North East Asian cultures frequently have traditions associating colors with four or five cardinal points.
Systems with five cardinal points (four directions and the center) include those from
pre-modern China, as well as traditional
Turkic,
Tibetan and
Ainu cultures. In Chinese tradition, the five cardinal point system is related to
I Ching, the
Wu Xing and the five
naked-eye planets. In traditional
Chinese astrology, the zodiacal belt is divided into the
four constellation groups corresponding to the directions.
Each direction is often identified with a color, and (at least in China) with a
mythological creature of that color. Geographical or ethnic terms may contain the name of the color instead of the name of the corresponding direction.
Examples
East:
Green (
青 "qīng" corresponds to both green and blue); Spring;
Wood
:
Qingdao (Tsingtao): "Green Island", a city on the east coast of China
:
Green Ukraine
South:
Red; Summer;
Fire
:
Red River (Asia): south of China
:
Red Ruthenia
:
Red Jews: a semi-mythological group of Jews
:
Red Croatia
:
Red Sea
West:
White
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
; Autumn;
Metal
A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...
:
White Sheep Turkmen
:
Akdeniz, meaning 'White Sea':
Mediterranean Sea in
Turkish
:
Balts,
Baltic words containing the stem ''balt-'' ("white")
:
Belarus, meaning 'White Russia'
:
White Ruthenia
:
White Serbia
:
White Croatia
North:
Black; Winter;
Water
:
Heilongjiang: "Black Dragon River" province in
Northeast China, also the
Amur River
:
Kara-Khitan Khanate: "Black Khitans" who originated in Northern China
:
Karadeniz, literally meaning 'Black Sea':
Black Sea in
Turkish
:
Black Hungarians
:
Black Ruthenia
Center:
Yellow;
Earth
:
Huangshan: "Yellow Mountain" in central China
:
Huang He: "Yellow River" in central China
:
Golden Horde: "Central Army" of the Mongols
Arabic world
Countries where Arabic is used refer to the cardinal directions as ''Ash Shamal'' (N), ''Al Gharb'' (W), ''Ash Sharq'' (E) and ''Al Janoob'' (S). Additionally, ''Al Wusta'' is used for the center. All five are used for geographic subdivision names (''
wilayahs'', states, regions, governorates, provinces, districts or even towns), and some are the origin of some Southern Iberian place names (such as
Algarve, Portugal and
Axarquía, Spain).
North America
In
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...
and
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...
, a number of traditional
indigenous cosmologies include four cardinal directions and a center. Some may also include "above" and "below" as directions, and therefore focus on a cosmology of seven directions. For example, among the
Hopi of the
Southwestern United States, the four named cardinal directions are not North, South, East and West but are the four directions associated with the places of sunrise and sunset at the winter and summer solstices.
Each direction may be associated with a color, which can vary widely between nations, but which is usually one of the basic colors found in nature and natural pigments, such as black, red, white, and yellow, with occasional appearances of blue, green, or other hues. There can be great variety in color symbolism, even among cultures that are close neighbors geographically.
India
Ten
Hindu deities, known as the "
Dikpālas", have been recognized in classical Indian scriptures, symbolizing the four cardinal and four intercardinal directions with the additional directions of
up and
down. Each of the ten directions has its own name in
Sanskrit.
Indigenous Australia
Some
indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are people with familial heritage from, or recognised membership of, the various ethnic groups living within the territory of contemporary Australia prior to History of Australia (1788–1850), British colonisation. The ...
have cardinal directions deeply embedded in their culture. For example, the
Warlpiri people have a cultural philosophy deeply connected to the four cardinal directions and the
Guugu Yimithirr people use cardinal directions rather than
relative direction
In geometry, direction, also known as spatial direction or vector direction, is the common characteristic of all ray (geometry), rays which coincide when translation (geometry), translated to share a common endpoint; equivalently, it is the commo ...
even when indicating the position of an object close to their body. (For more information, see:
Cultures without relative directions.)
The precise direction of the cardinal points appears to be important in
Aboriginal stone arrangements.
Many aboriginal languages contain words for the usual four cardinal directions, but some contain words for 5 or even 6 cardinal directions.
Unique (non-compound) names of intercardinal directions
In some
language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
s, such as
Estonian,
Finnish and
Breton, the intercardinal directions have names that are not compounds of the names of the cardinal directions (as, for instance, ''northeast'' is compounded from ''north'' and ''east''). In Estonian, those are ''kirre'' (northeast), ''kagu'' (southeast), ''edel'' (southwest), and ''loe'' (northwest), in Finnish ''koillinen'' (northeast), ''kaakko'' (southeast), ''lounas'' (southwest), and ''luode'' (northwest). In Japanese, there is the interesting situation that native Japanese words (
yamato kotoba, kun readings of kanji) are used for the cardinal directions (such as ''minami'' for 南, south), but borrowed Chinese words (on readings of kanji) are used for intercardinal directions (such as ''tō-nan'' for 東南, southeast, lit. "east-south"). In the
Malay language
Malay ( , ; , Jawi alphabet, Jawi: ) is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language spoken primarily by Malays (ethnic group), Malays in several islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula on the mainland Asia. The lang ...
, adding ''laut'' (sea) to either east (''timur'') or west (''barat'') results in northeast or northwest, respectively, whereas adding ''daya'' to west (giving ''barat daya'') results in southwest. Southeast has a special word: ''tenggara''.
Sanskrit and other Indian languages that borrow from it use the names of the
gods associated with each direction: east (Indra), southeast (Agni), south (Yama/Dharma), southwest (Nirrti), west (Varuna), northwest (Vayu), north (Kubera/Heaven) and northeast (Ishana/Shiva). North is associated with the Himalayas and heaven while the south is associated with the underworld or land of the fathers (Pitr loka). The directions are named by adding "disha" to the names of each god or entity: e.g. Indradisha (direction of Indra) or Pitrdisha (direction of the forefathers i.e. south).
The cardinal directions of the
Hopi language and the
Tewa dialect spoken by the
Hopi-Tewa are related to the places of sunrise and sunset at the solstices, and correspond approximately to the European intercardinal directions.
Non-compass directional systems
Use of the compass directions is common and deeply embedded in
European and
Chinese culture (see
south-pointing chariot). Some other cultures make greater use of other referents, such as toward the sea or toward the mountains (
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...
,
Bali), or upstream and downstream (most notably in ancient
Egypt
Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
, also in the
Yurok and
Karuk languages).
Lengo (Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands) has four non-compass directions: landward, seaward, upcoast, and downcoast.
Some languages lack words for
body-relative directions such as left/right, and use geographical directions instead.
See also
*
Classical compass winds – an early source of cardinal directions
*
Cultural synesthesia
*
Elevation
The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...
– the mapping information ignored by the cardinal point system
*
Geocaching – an international hobby
*
Geographic Information System (GIS)
*
Latitude and
Longitude
*
List of cartographers – famous map makers through history
*
List of international common standards
*
Magnetic deviation – explanation of the slight misalignment of a compass with the Earth's north and south poles
*
Orienteering – an international hobby/sport that depends on knowledge of cardinal directions and how to locate them
*
Points of the compass
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, Radius, radially arrayed compass directions (or Azimuth#In navigation, azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A ''compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, ...
*
Polar coordinate system
*
Uses of trigonometry
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cardinal Direction
Orientation (geometry)