Kingsley, Michael C.S.

English

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR:‘Arctic’ or ‘arctic’?Dear Editor:A recent meeting on climate change and its possibleeffects on Arctic ecosystems left one clear impression—ofconfusion about whether to capitalize the word ‘Arctic.’Many presenters hedged their bets by using both upper-and lower-case initials, on the same slide. I analyse heresome thoughts on the subject—etymology, analogy, andgrammar—and suggest a logical approach.First, etymology: ‘arktos’ is Greek for a bear—anybear. But ‘Arktos’ is The Bear—the northern constellationcalled the Great Bear, the Plough, the Big Dipper, orCharles’s Wain. And ‘-ikos’ is an adjectival termination,so ’Arktikos’ refers to the regions under the constella-tion—the far north. ‘Arctic’ (like other words ending in ‘-ic’) is in origin an adjective—but an adjective derivedfrom a proper noun. Of course, it is also much used as aproper noun, ‘the Arctic’ being the expression we use torefer to the region of the far north, and it is appropriatelycapitalized in that use.Divergences of usage arise when the word appearsattributively—‘an Arctic river,’ or ‘Arctic tundra.’ Oneschool of thought reasons that in this construction ‘Arctic’is an adjective, adjectives are not capitalized in English,and therefore ‘Arctic’ should have a lower-case initial.This reasoning is doubly fallacious. Firstly, ‘Cana-dian,’ ‘French,’ and many others show that English adjec-tives derived from proper nouns can quite well havecapital letters—the assertion that they cannot is heard onlyin pleading for a lower-case initial for ‘Arctic.’ Secondly,‘Arctic’ in these constructions is not an adjective, but anattributive use of the noun itself, which stands beforeanother noun, as is common in English and some otherlanguages, to describe it. A test for an adjective is whethera word can be used predicatively: for example, the differ-ence between ‘a small vehicle’ and ‘a passenger vehicle’is seen by comparing the predicative construction ‘thatvehicle is small’ with ‘that vehicle is passenger.’ ‘Arctic,’in the sense we mean it here, is not used predicatively: weLETTER TO THE EDITOR • 321hear for example ‘those are Arctic scientists’ but not ‘thescientists in that group are Arctic’ or ‘this is an Arcticcommunity’ but not ‘that community is Arctic.’ When wetalk about ‘an Arctic scientist’ or ‘an Arctic community’we make direct reference to the Arctic itself, we are usingnot an adjective, but the noun, to describe the one or theother, and the upper-case initial is appropriate.A useful analogy is ‘Atlantic,’ like ‘Arctic’ in origin anadjective and referring to a natural feature (the AtlasMountains) and the associated direction or regions. Like‘Arctic,’ ‘Atlantic’ has no predicative use. It retains itscapital A in all uses.However, there is a use for ‘arctic’ that is truly adjectival,and that is the metaphorical or hyperbolic use. The shiveringcommuter on the corner of Portage and Main grumbling ‘Thatwind is arctic this evening!’ is using ‘arctic’ as a true adjec-tive. The predicative use is legitimate, no reference to theArctic is intended—the meaning is only ‘very cold’—and thelower-case initial is appropriate.‘Arctic,’ therefore, is best capitalized in all uses, bothsubstantive and attributive, that refer to the Arctic itself.The lower-case can then be usefully reserved to distin-guish the metaphorical use which means no more than‘very cold.’What about compounds, where a prefix is added to thenoun? A useful model is found in ‘un-American’ or ‘pan-European’; i.e., hyphenate and use a lower-case initial onthe prefix, giving, for example, ‘sub-Arctic habitats.’Two minor points support the upper-case initial. Thefirst is practical: irregularities in a page of print help thereader’s eye to navigate, and capital letters are helpful.The second is perhaps political: no one with a seriousinterest in the Arctic should consent to see the name of theregion that occupies his thoughts—and to which he de-votes his existence—spelled, under any excuse, with alower-case initial!Michael C.S. KingsleyGreenland Institute of Natural ResourcesP.O. Box 5703900 NuukGreenland

'Arctic' or 'arctic'?

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'Arctic' or 'arctic'?

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