What's In A Name: Nautography

When I was considering names for this 'blog, I tried taking all of the components of what I want to cover (sailing, photography, and writing about my experiences on the water) and cramming them all together into a single name. I came up with all manner of odd and/or silly ones, but a phrase that stuck in my head was "Nautical Photography". After discarding my other options and rolling this phrase around in my head, I shortened it to "Nautography" not knowing, or caring for that matter, if it was a real word.

I quickly did a Google search on the term "Nautography" and didn't find much in terms of a formal definition. Urban Dictionary defines it as "a description of the life of sailors." An excerpt from the 1824 Bibliotheca Britannica mentions "describing the Sea-coasts, Channels...and Dangers upon the Coasts of England." But despite all the powers of Google, no other formal definition of this word was readily available.

Perfect! I had a single word that summed up what I want to share, was somewhat uncommon in everyday use so it'd be easy to remember, and happened to be available both as a Blogspot name and a .com domain name. I couldn't imagine a better trifecta of 'blog naming, so I ran with it.

So that's how Nautography came to be.

And just because I feel bad putting up a post without a picture, here is a shot of dusk looking over the Tred Avon River in Oxford, MD after the 2014 NASS Oxford Race. Good times.

Tred Avon River at dusk, Oxford,MD