Seven (Several) Seas

One of the categories of Anna Sova's online color pallets (for wall finishes) is called "7/10 of the planet." The description goes on to list the seven seas of classical antiquity:

• Red Sea
• Mediterranean Sea
• Persian Gulf
• Black Sea
• Adriatic Sea
• Caspian Sea
• Indian Ocean

Curious about which cartographer coined the term I started to do some research. While I'm not trying to criticize the marketing staff at Anna Sova (who, in my opinion, have done a fantastic job of cataloging their many color options!) they might be a bit off about their listing.

At least four ancient nations described "seven seas," Hindus, Chinese, Persians, and Romans all called various bodies of water by this ambiguous name. The Romans dubbed the seven salty lagoons surrounding Venice such; the Hindus used it for the Punjab River; the Persians did the same for the Oxus River. This begs the question: why always seven?

Seven is held up as a sacred number by people around the world. There are seven days in a week, seven deadly sins, seven wonders of the world, seven "naked eye" solar bodies. Some people even suggest that seven is analogous to several: the use of the number seven might be a way of acknowledging the vast and unpredictable nature of water.

Rudyard Kipling might be responsible for the modern usage of the term. In 1896 he titled a collection of poems The Seven Seas. Nevertheless, modern attempts to mold the oceans of the world to the number seven seem contrived (dividing the Atlantic Pacific into North and South, for instance).