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Concept
English Channel
Summary
The English Channel, also known as simply the Channel (or historically as the British Channel), is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Southern England from northern France. It links to the southern part of the North Sea by the Strait of Dover at its northeastern end. It is the busiest shipping area in the world.
It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to at its narrowest in the Strait of Dover. It is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some .
The Channel was a key factor in Britain becoming a naval superpower and has been utilised by Britain as a natural defence mechanism by which many would-be invasions, such as the Napoleonic Wars and those of Adolf Hitler in World War II, were halted.
The population around the English Channel is predominantly located on the English coast and the major languages spoken in this region are English and French.
The name first appears in Roman sources as Oceanus Britannicus (or Mare Britannicum, meaning the British Ocean or British Sea). Variations of this term were used by influential writers such as Ptolemy, and remained popular with British and continental authors well into the modern era. Other Latin names for the sea include Oceanus Gallicus (the Gaulish Ocean) which was used by Isidore of Seville in the sixth century.
The term British Sea is still used by speakers of Cornish and Breton, with the sea known to them as Mor Bretannek in and Mor Breizh respectively. While it is likely that these names derive from the Latin term, it is possible that they predate the arrival of the Romans in the area. The modern Welsh is often given as Môr Udd (the Lord's/Prince's Sea); however, this name originally described both the Channel and the North Sea combined.
Anglo-Saxon texts make reference to the sea as Sūð-sǣ ('South Sea'), but this term fell out of favour, as later English authors followed the same conventions as their Latin and Norman contemporaries. One English name that did persist was the Narrow Seas, a collective term for the channel and North Sea.
Official source
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