Principal winds
The points of the compass mark the divisions on a compass, which is primarily divided into four points: north, south, east, and west. These cardinal directions are further subdivided by the addition of the four intercardinal (or ordinal) directions—northeast (NE), southeast (SE), southwest (SW), and northwest (NW)—to indicate the eight principal winds. In meteorological usage, further intermediate points between cardinal and ordinal points, such as north-northeast (NNE) are added to give the 16 points of a wind compass.
At the most complete division are the full thirty-two points of the mariner's compass, which adds points such as north by east (NbE) between north and north-northeast, and northeast by north (NEbN) between north-northeast and northeast. A compass point allows reference to a specific course (or azimuth) in a colloquial fashion, without having to compute or remember degrees.
The European nautical tradition retained the term "one point" to describe 1⁄32 of a circle in such phrases as "two points to starboard". By the middle of the eighteenth century, the 32-point system was extended with half- and quarter-points to allow 128 directions to be differentiated.
The names of the compass point directions follow these rules:
In summary, the 32-wind compass rose is yielded from the eight principal winds, eight half-winds and sixteen quarter-winds combined together, with each compass direction point at 11¼° angle from the next.
In the mariner's exercise of boxing the compass, all thirty-two points of the compass are named in clockwise order.
The traditional compass rose of eight winds (and its 16-wind and 32-wind derivatives) was invented by seafarers in the Mediterranean Sea during the Middle Ages (the ancient Greco-Roman 12 classical compass winds have little to do with them). The traditional mariner's wind names were expressed in Italian – or, more precisely, the Italianate Mediterranean lingua franca common among sailors in the 13th and 14th centuries, that was principally composed of Genoese (Ligurian), mixed with Venetian, Sicilian, Provençal, Catalan, Greek and Arabic terms from around the Mediterranean basin.
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