A historical region of north-central Europe bordering on the Baltic Sea in present-day northwest Poland and northeast Germany. It was inhabited by Slavic tribes in the 10th century and conquered by Poland in the 12th century. The territory was later split up and controlled by various powers, including the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.
Word History: Pomerania was a district of Prussia extending along the Baltic from Straslund in eastern Germany to the Vistula in Poland.
Pomeranian first occurs in English around 1760, referring to the toy dog, originally a sled dog in Lapland and later a shepherd dog in Germany.
Pomerania is the medieval Latin form of German
Pommern, itself a loanword in German from Slavic. The Polish word for
Pomerania is
Pomorze, composed of the preposition
po, “along, by,” and
morze, “sea.” The Slavic word for sea,
more, which becomes
morze in Polish, comes from the Indo-European noun
*mori-, “sea,” the source of Latin
mare, “sea,” and the
mer- of English
mermaid.