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May 17

Tsunami

Before the huge tsunami of Dec. 2004, had the Japanese word 'tsunami' been in general use amongst English speakers? I was living in Japan at the time, and when I came back to the UK a few years later, I found that everyone here was using the word. I found this odd, as the Tsunami of 2004 had bugger all to do with Japan (we slightly felt the earthquake, however). What exactly caused English speakers to switch from the original English 'tidal-wave', to the (very un-)English 'tsunami'? The word is even being used in metaphorical senses, too - a tsunami of complaints, for example, and even has derivatives (shitsunami of nightmares, for example). KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 08:20, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it had already started to supplant "tidal wave", which typically have nothing to do with tides. I remember seeing the word "tsunami" for the first time while flicking through a copy of Reader's Digest while waiting in a doctor's surgery. I guess this would have been in the early 70s, very roughly. I came across it often enough after that for it to register. Exactly when the media generally decided that it was time to ditch "tidal wave" in favour of "tsunami", I couldn't say, but in my experience it was quite some time before December 2004. Probably 10 years before, again very roughly. I have no idea how one would search for this type of thing. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:31, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I'd agree with Jack's observations. Unfortunately, our Tsunami article uses the unhelpful and non-encyclopaedic expression "In recent years..." for when the change happened. If we get a more definitive answer here, perhaps we can fix that. HiLo48 (talk) 08:42, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

One way of looking at this is using Google ngrams [1], which indicates that the use of 'tsunami' was common by 1960, but really took off in the late 1990s. Mikenorton (talk) 08:48, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes but metaphorical usage - at least in the UK - all originated from the 2004 event. Before 2004, the word actually got some usage as a cool Japanese word without any heed to its meaning. IIRC, there was a fashionable clothes shop in the UK called "Tsunami" that suddenly became insensitive in December 2004.

As per XKCD, tsunamis were often depicted as large breaking waves before 2004, which may have caused people to see "tidal wave" as more wrong than it is.

Also worth mentioning in a UK context that there hasn't been a significant tsunami in Britain since 1755, and the country has almost no tsunami infrastructure. "Tidal wave" was probably never that well-established in Britain in the first place. Kahastok talk 09:12, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I recall seeing that word in the early 1960s, although "tidal wave" may have been more prevalent at the time. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:11, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

According to EO,[2] it first appeared in English in 1896. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:13, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that sound correct. The first cite for use in print given by the OED is from 1897 (L. Hearn: Gleanings in Buddha-Fields), then the word appeared in a report on earthquakes in 1904, but still in quoted as a foreign word. The first cited usage without quotes (recognising that it had become an English word) was from Nature in 1938. Publications such as New Scientist and some American survey publications were still using the old term "tidal wave" for a tsunami in the 1980s. Dbfirs 11:54, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

When I was a geography student in the 1970s in England, tsunami was certainly the preferred term, as "tidal wave" was deemed inaccurate, though it was probably still in general use at that time (insofar as any term for such a rare event was in "general use"). In my town, we have a tropical fish and pond supply retailer, set up in April 2004, called Tsunami Aquatics. I recall that they did think about changing their name, but as they were just becoming known and established at the end of 2004 they decided to keep it. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:52, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

As our article shows, the Manic Street Preachers's song "Tsunami" was recorded in 1998 and released as a single in 1999, so this is a cultural example of its use in mass media. --TammyMoet (talk) 12:30, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

A tidal bore is something entirely different, where a change in tides sends a wave up a river. They happen on a regular schedule with each tide in some locations. "Tidal wave" seemed to be a confusion between this and a tsunami. A tsunami has nothing to do with tides, except that if one hits at high tide it will be worse.

As for when the proper word "tsunami" was adopted in the US, I suspect The Weather Channel (launched in 1982) had something to do with it. For the first time, a channel was entirely devoted to weather, so they no longer had others in charge who said "Sure, we know it's really a tsunami, but it's not our job to correct people, so just use the term they already know". After TWC adopted the term, the local stations then had to show that they were as smart and knew the proper term, too.

I later saw a TV weather broadcast try to substitute the Arabic word haboob for the English word sand storm, but that hasn't caught on in the US, because the English word is perfectly good. (Wikipedia has a separate dust storm article with a redirect from sand storm, not sure that differs from a haboob enough to justify a second article.) StuRat (talk) 13:23, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Arizonans certainly call it a haboob Hotclaws (talk) 01:52, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Unquestionably, there are many haboobs in Arizona. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:28, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Maybe because a word like "haboob" sounds rather silly in English, while "tsunami" sounds properly scary. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:08, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Does it, really? What if you were told it's the Japanese word for "chocolate", or "orgasm", or "washing machine"? Mental associations are pretty much everything when it comes to the emotional impact of words. Our word "bog" is the Russian word for "God", and our word "god" is the Russian word for "year". Go figure. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:31, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Sure. For example, newsreels during WWII typically referred to the German air force as the Luftwaffe, probably because it sounds foreign and scary. Never mind that the word Luftwaffe means "air force". Then there's Izvestia, the newspaper of the USSR and now Russia, which sounds a lot more exotic than its English meaning, "News". And tsunami, like "tidal wave", is not really the best term, but it sounds more interesting than "harbor waves". However, any word with "boob" in it either sounds like a childish synonym for "breasts", or more generally, someone who's mentally deficient, as with Barney Fife yelling, "You're a boob, Gomer!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:39, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

As I noted above, before 2004 "tsunami" was used as a fairly generic, cool-sounding foreign word in the UK. It was used in branding and corporate names in ways totally divorced from its meaning as a potentially catastrophic natural disaster. For example, Ghmyrtle mentioned Tsunami Aquatics, so-named in April 2004. They might have known what it meant, but it was an abstract concept, almost not a real thing. It was only after the Boxing Day Tsunami hit that it became linked with disaster. Kahastok talk 19:54, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I disagree with the premise that it was a generic "cool-sounding" word, and an abstract concept. I've known for many years (long before 2004) that a tsunami was a big wave caused by earthquakes. English secondary school geography and university in the 1970s used the term, in comparison with "tidal wave" during 1960s primary schooling. I can't recall its use anywhere else, including in branding. The 2004 tsunami particularly interesting for being the first one I can recall seeing footage of. Bazza (talk) 10:46, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Maybe it's a regional thing: I live in an area that's prone to tsunami damage and that's the term we learned in school (early-mid '90s). Tsunami was just starting to overtake "tidal wave" by then. Mingmingla (talk) 20:20, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I think so too. People in Hawaii seemed to be familiar with the word tsunami as Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was established in 1949. The first use of the word in en was found in this National Geographic article in September, 1896. Lafcadio Hearn used the word in 1897 in his short story called A Living God in this book. See also History Of Tsunami: The Word And The Wave. Oda Mari (talk) 17:04, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

• Note that the word haboob has peripheral consonants which are marked for comedic effect as opposed to tsunami, which has only m, a very unmarked sound. I am fairly sure even Krusty the Clown remarks in an old Simpsons on the fact that b's are funny while dental consonants aren't. μηδείς (talk) 19:30, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure I was familiar with the word "tsunami" long before 2004. 86.167.19.243 (talk) 20:58, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

The first thing I can remember learning (in the 70's) about tidal waves was that they had nothing to do with tides, and should be called sunamies. Of course tidal bores do have to do with the tide, and tidal waves do rise like swift, unchecked tides. The real lesson seems to be, run for high ground as soon as you see a prescriptivist. μηδείς (talk) 02:24, 20 May 2014 (UTC)