this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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Another fun-fact: The Mercator projection was, at its inception, the first map that could be used for long-distance sea navigation over the mediterranean and Atlantic in the sense that axes are scaled such that courses plotted on the map actually match the compass course you need to follow to get somewhere. This also happens to be the reason it became popular, and the reason it was made, rather than the commonly quoted reason of "making Europe big at the expense of things closer to the equator".
And Mercator means merchant in Latin. I thought that was because of the projection's purpose, but turns out that the inventer's name was actually Mercator, which was a latinisation of his Flemish birthname Kremer (meaning grocer or merchant).
Now that is a fun-fact! I knew the guy was called Mercator, but didn't know about the Latin origin, and can definitely see the origin of the name spreading as a misconception.