Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

Re:Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left”... by pmontra on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @05:10AM (#35626021)

Molino is mulino in Italian. Ancient Greek and Latin had similar words starting with mol-. Given the importance of that technology I'm not surprised that the word didn't change much. English' mill is also close to the romance languages. [1]

Port and starboard used to be "babordo" and "tribordo" in Italian but they were replaced by "sinistra" (the very word used to say "left") and "dritta".

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mill#Etymology_1

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Re:Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left”... by kwhitefoot on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @05:25AM (#35626123)

Babord is port in Norwegian. But starboard is styrbord which makes a lot of sense because the steering board, or oar, is on the steersman's right side.

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Re:Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left”... by ekianjo on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @05:50AM (#35626258)

Babord is also used in French

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Re:Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left”... by stefncb on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @05:59AM (#35626307)

We use "tribord" and "babord" in romanian.

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Re:Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left”... by oesexe on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @07:02AM (#35626692)

Danish as well. I didn’t see it mentioned, so I will add: that back then, a ship could not moor along the key on starboard/styrbord side. So it had to be the other side: hence the English port side.

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Re:Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left”... by anthk on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @06:35AM (#35626502)

Babor y estribor in Spanish. In Spanish we used to say "siniestra", now we say "izquierda", a loanword from Basque 'ezkerra'.

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