Fun for Friday: Legend Etymology for Stories and Maps?
Why do maps include something called a legend, and how does that connect to the idea of legends as stories?
The etymology of “legend” is tied to the Latin word “legere,” which means “to read.” Unsurprisingly, this connects to things like legibility. It’s also connected to “lex” and “lectus,” which connects to things like lexicon and lecture. (This site has a cool diagram that shows the evolution of the related words.) So it’s pretty clearly about words.
But how does that then get us to a map’s legend? Well, it’s the part of the map that you need to read–it’s the words that give you the guide to what the map depicts. You can look at a map to understand directions, topography, etc., but if you want to know things like the distance between the place you’re in and the place you’re trying to go, you need the legend to figure that out. Or if there’s a symbol on the map that isn’t intuitive, the legend will explain what that symbol means.
As it applies to stories, legend makes a bit more sense–they’re the words that get recorded about important things. As Grace Tierney explains in this blog post, legends were the stories important enough to be written down. I’d also argue that they were the stories important enough to be remembered, in a pre-literate society that relied on oral recitation of the important stories. Those oral recitations were eventually transcribed, thus making legends, “things to be read.”
If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, Everyday Etymology on YouTube has a video about this word as well!
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