Origin of The Name
The name "Dents du Midi" is of relatively recent origin. The native inhabitants originally called them the "Teeth of Tsallen". The present Haute Cime was then called Dent du Midi, and it eventually gave its name to the entire mountain.
Each peak, or "tooth", has had several names over the centuries:
- La Cime de l'Est (Summit of the East) was called Mont de Novierre before approximately the seventeenth century, then Mont Saint Michel after the landslides of 1635 and 1636, and finally Dent Noire (Black Tooth) till the 19th century.
- Dent Jaune (The Yellow Tooth) was called the Dent Rouge (Red Tooth) until 1879.
- Les Doigts (The Fingers) were called Le Doigt de Champéry (The Finger of Champéry, 1882) then Le Doigt de Salanfe (The Finger of Salanfe, 1886) before finally just Les Doigts.
- La Haute Cime (The High Summit) also had several names: Dent de l’Ouest (Tooth of the West, 1784), Dent du Midi (Tooth of the South), Dent de Tsallen (Tooth of Tsallen), and Dent de Challent (Tooth of Challent).
Read more about this topic: Dents Du Midi
Famous quotes containing the words the name, origin of and/or origin:
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”
—Bible: Hebrew Exodus, 20:7.
The third commandment.
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)