 Welcome to the Endless Knot. This video is inspired by the fundraising effort Team C's, a group of YouTubers focused on the problem of marine plastic pollution. I'm very supportive of this cause, and I'm very happy to help raise awareness. But I'm going to suggest that if you want to contribute, you make your contributions to the Ocean Conservancy directly. There's a link in the description to their site. Stick around at the end of this video to hear why I'll be doing that myself. And now, let's look at some surprising sea connections. The word sea, or sa, in Old English is Germanic in origin, having cognates in other Germanic languages such as Old Norse Sjar, sea, Old High German Seo, sea, lake, pond, and Gothic Sius, lake, marshland, coming from proto-Germanic Sius, sea, lake, marshland. As with other Germanic words for Bodies of Water, the distinction between saltwater and freshwater is complex and difficult, and the deeper etymology of this word is also uncertain. Two Proto-Indo-European roots have been proposed as the source for proto-Germanic Sius, the first being sigh, meaning suffering, pain, illness, damage, also the source of Old English Saur and Modern English Saur, as well as Latin Sius, raging mad fierce. According to this theory then, sea would come from the notion of a raging body of water. Another related English word is sorry from Old English Sari, distressed, grieved, full of sorrow, literally full of sores, and perhaps surprisingly, not at all etymologically related to the word sorrow, which comes ultimately from pie swerg, to worry, be sick, though the spelling of sorry with the double Rs may have been influenced by sorrow. In any case, how much actual soreness or sorrow is involved when bumping your opponent's pawns in the classic board game sorry is debatable. The object of the game is to be the first to move your four pawns from the start position around the board to the home position, and when you bump or block your opponent's pawn, you say sorry. What you may not know is that sorry is derived from an ancient game from India called Pachizi, and when I say ancient, I'm referring to the fact that the game is depicted in the Sanskrit epic poem, the Mahabharata, dating back as far as the third century BCE, playing an important part in the plot. Unlike sorry, in which the pawns are moved according to instructions given on cards, in Pachizi, you throw cowry shells in a manner similar to dice, and the number of moves is indicated by which way up they land, and the highest score that can be rolled is 25. Thus, the name Pachizi means 25, coming ultimately from the Pai root Penkwa, meaning 5. Versions of Pachizi can be found in many different parts of the world, and there have been more than one western version of the game marketed, such as the American game Parchizi and the British game Ludo, which means I play in Latin, which are both played with dice and seem to date back at least to the 19th century. When the Royal Navy got their hands on the game, they turned it into Uckers, with its own slight variations, which became quite popular and particularly associated with the Royal Navy. The etymology of the name Uckers is unknown, and though it only first appears in print in 1946, this version of the game is believed to date back to the 18th or 19th century. But let's stick a pin in the Royal Navy for a moment and look at the other possible etymology for the word C. Other etymologists trace C back to the root Sekwa, meaning spill, pour, flow out, which became Latin sequus dry, source of the English word desiccate, the idea being something is dry if all the liquid has flowed out. This became French sec dry, becoming also a specific wine term, as in English we might refer to a dry wine, in other words, not sweet. And it's from this that we get the English word sac, loosely sherry, as in dry sac sherry. Technically speaking, sherry is specifically a fortified white wine from the area around the city of Jerez de la Frontera, in Andalusia, Spain. The word sherry is a mistaken singular from Cheris, an anglicization of the name Jerez. Sac referred to a similar product from either the Canary Islands or more generally mainland Spain. And speaking of sac, in 1668 Charles II of England founded the position of poet laureate, appointing John Dryden as the first poet laureate, for which he was rewarded with a salary of 200 pounds per year and a butt of canary wine, in other words, sac. Later on, though so honored, had the option of receiving instead the monetary equivalent of the sac. Alfred Lord Tennyson, for instance, took the cash. But even more modern poets laureate opted for the booze, such as Ted Hughes, who received 720 bottles of sherry, and Carol Ann Duffy, who got 5,750 pounds and the barrel of sherry. One of the works Dryden is most known for was his translation of the works of the Roman poet Virgil, and his rendering of the Aeneid was particularly influential. Later poet Alexander Pope was deeply influenced by Dryden, and, following in his footsteps, wrote an equally influential translation of the Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, by Homer. Dryden himself had translated passages from Homer, though not the full poems, and later poet laureate Tennyson based two of his most famous poems, Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters, on Homer's Odyssey. The Odyssey tells the story of the long sea voyage of the hero Odysseus, whose name in Latin is rendered as Ulysses, as he returns from the Trojan War, only to be delayed on the way by many adventures, including the one-eyed monstrous Cyclops, the island of the Lotus Eaters, and their apathy-inducing plants, the basis of Tennyson's poem, the witch Cersei, who transforms the crew into animals, and Calypso, the sea nymph who delays Odysseus for seven years on the island of Ogugia as a kind of sex slave or kept man. Put a pin in Calypso, too, as we'll come back to her later as well. Odysseus also crosses the ocean, or Okeanos in Greek, a word of uncertain origin and likely borrowed from a now lost pre-Greek substrate language, though comparisons have been made to Sanskrit and Hebrew words meaning surround, to get to the entrance of the underworld. You see, the Greeks conceived of the ocean as the waters that surrounded the world, as opposed to the Mediterranean, which was a sea in the middle of the world, Mediterranean meaning literally in the middle of the land in Latin. And they located the entrance to the underworld, where the souls of the dead go when they die, at a harbor in the ocean at the edge of the world. And it's interesting that we've come to souls going to the ocean, as another likely cognate of the word sea is the word soul. The ancient Germanic peoples, too, associated the sea, or at least bodies of water, whether they be fresh or saltwater, with souls. Germanic literary evidence, such as ship burials, described in the Old English epic poem Beowulf and the Icelandic myth of the death of Odin's son Baldur, as well as archeological evidence of ship burials, like the one at Sutton Hoo, suggest the notion of a return of the soul to the sea after death. And quite plausibly, the word soul, which is Saul in Old English and traceable back to the reconstructed Germanic root Cywelo, comes from that Germanic root Cywis, sea, lake, marshland, which gives us the modern English word sea. Now, when we think of souls imperiled at sea, we naturally think of the distress call SOS, commonly understood to stand for the phrase save our souls. In fact, the Morse code sequence dot dot dot dash dash dot dot dot, which was originally established for maritime use in the early 20th century and literally spells out the letters SOS, was actually chosen simply because it was a distinctive pattern not easily confusable with any other message and was not at all an acronym or initialism. Nevertheless, the save our souls interpretation has persisted in popular understanding and furthermore, the SOS initialism has been further adopted as the name for a number of other things, including marine conservation organizations such as the save our seas foundation focused on wildlife, save our shores who focus on the reduction of marine debris, particularly plastics in the Monterey Bay in California, and save our surf, a community environmental organization that began in 1964 to protest the degradation of surfing spots in Hawaii, one of the very first marine conservation organizations. The word marine, by the way, comes from the main Proto-Indo-European word for sea, mori, body of water, from which comes Old English Mera, sea, ocean, lake, pond, and modern English mere, meaning pool, small lake, pond, and Latin mare, sea, seawater, and thus English marine and maritime. Both the Old English words SA and Mera can be found in the epic poem Beowulf, but it's here in marine conservation activism that our two pin connections, the Royal Navy and that Homeric sea nymph Calypso from the Greek epic The Odyssey come together. During World War II in 1943, the Royal Navy commissioned a U.S. built minesweeper designated at the time simply as HMS J826. After the war in 1947, she was formally handed back to the U.S. Navy. In 1949, she was bought by Joseph Gasan of Malta, who had her converted into a ferry, running the route between Marfa in the north of Malta and Magar Gozo in 1947, and renamed her Calypso G after the sea nymph Calypso, whose island of Ogigia was mythically associated with Gozo, entering service in March 1950. But only shortly after, she was bought by British millionaire and former member of parliament, Thomas Lowell Guinness in 1950. He leased her to the oceanographer and marine conservationist Jacques Cousteau for a symbolic one franc a year, and he refitted the ship into an expedition vessel and support base for diving, filming, and oceanographic research. And it's now known as the R.V. or research vessel Calypso. In addition to Cousteau's many films and documentaries, many people might know the R.V. Calypso is a tribute song called Calypso, written by American singer-songwriter, activist, and humanitarian John Denver, who among his many causes was a big supporter of marine conservation, and was a close friend of Cousteau. The song Calypso, which received substantial airplay itself, was the B side to Denver's last number one hit song, I'm Sorry, recalling that other possible etymology of the word C that connected it with the word sorry. But that's not enough connections for you. In the summer of 1971, a man named Bill Kardash, a marketing expert with a passion for whales, was attending the annual International Wailing Commission in Washington DC, and between sessions came across John Denver sitting cross-legged on the floor playing guitar. Kardash expressed his worries about the plight of the whales, and Denver said to him, well, what are you going to do about it? Inspired by this chance encounter, he decided to get involved. So within a year, he had started the Delta Corporation, which later became Ocean Conservancy, sponsor of the Team C's project, which this video is released in support of. And that brings me to the charities involved in this project. I wholeheartedly support Ocean Conservancy, which is doing a fantastic job with research, leadership, and advocacy for science-based solutions to the ocean's problems. But I don't feel that I can support the other group associated with this fundraiser, the Ocean Cleanup. Many scientists and activists have raised concerns about its goals, methods, and behavior. And I'm concerned that funding and celebrating them will do more harm than good. I've provided links in the description that give more information about these concerns. It's true that if you choose to donate through Team C's, that money will only be going toward their river cleanup, which is less controversial. So you can decide what you prefer to do. I'd still rather direct my money directly to the Ocean Conservancy, and to other organizations focused on preventing plastic from entering the water systems. Nonetheless, I thank Team C's for raising this vitally important issue. Thanks for watching.