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Weekly Georgian Etymology: ჩრდილოეთი črdiloeti ‘north’, lit. land of shadow, from Old Georgian ႹႰႣႨႪႭ črdilo shadow plus –et, < čero shadow poss from PIr *caHyáH + PK *dil- morning. In many west Eurasian lgs, words for north are commonly associated with darkness, shadow or night.
It is first attested in Leonti Mroveli’s 10th c account of the 1st c BC king Artoces: მისცა ქალაქი მცხეთა და… ყოველი ქართლი მტკუარსა ჩრდილოეთი ‘He gave the city of Mtskheta and... all Kartli north of the Mtkvari [River]& #39;
The word ჩრდილო črdilo itself probably originally meant not just any shadow but the darkness of morning twilight: it is transparently composed of ჩერო čero, also & #39;shade, shadow& #39;, and დილ- dil- & #39;morning& #39;.
ჩერო čero itself seems to be an ancient loan from a very early Proto-Iranian lg, but which precise one is unclear. PIE *(s)ḱeh₃ih₂ shadow becomes Proto-Iranian *caHyáH regularly (after s-mobile is lost), but the problem is none of these lgs undergo rhotacism of the medial /y/.
Indic lgs DO sometimes undergo rhotacism in this precise environment: e.g. Sanskrit छाया čāyā becomes Bengali ছাইড়া čaiṛa. This is possibly because a separate suffix is involved: *chāyā-illa is the Ashokan Prakrit form. Whether something similar happened is unclear.
Be that as it may, Georgian ჩერო *čero is a very old loan whose origin has not been pinned down. It was compounded with დილა dila & #39;morning& #39; already in Old Georgian to mean & #39;twilight darkness& #39;.
So how did this word for darkness become associated with the cardinal direction of north? Across western Eurasian lgs, the metaphor of darkness is common:
Proto-Balto-Slavic: *śḗˀwer- dark, murky
Bashkir төньяҡ night-side
Hungarian észak night-piece
Polish północ midnight
Proto-Balto-Slavic: *śḗˀwer- dark, murky
Bashkir төньяҡ night-side
Hungarian észak night-piece
Polish północ midnight
This metaphor which stems from obvious facts about seasonal light and dark have very ancient associations specifically with the Pontic-Caspian steppe, as Homer describes this home of the Iranian-speaking Cimmerians thus:
This lexical pattern probably spread in the first millennium, as it is a widespread across lg families that only achieved their current geographical distribution after around 300-800 AD, including Kartvelian, Slavic, Hungarian, Turkic and Balkan Romance lgs:
Other evidence for this fact is that it is not shared at deeper phylogenies. Hungarian has észak & #39;night-piece& #39; for north, but Finnish has pohjoinen & #39;bottom-land& #39;; Latin had septentriō & #39;land of Ursa Major& #39;, but Aromanian has njeadzã-noapti, from media noct- & #39;midnight& #39;.
All of this suggests that Georgian must have borrowed this metaphor for the cardinal direction in late antiquity, during the middle of the first millennium AD.
