"You got your etymology on my nautical history!"

All 569 pages of To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World by Arthur Herman are dense, interesting, insightful, and eminently readable (so far, at least). But page 162 in particular coughs up an excellent etymological insight. It turns out that while the term 'starboard', describing the right side of a ship, has been around for 700+ years, the convention of using 'port' to describe the right side is a comparable bouncing baby of less than 200.

Starboard is an evolution of steerboard. In the 1300's, the steering oar was mounted on the right-hand side of the ship. Simple enough.

The left-hand side was originally called the landboard side, as it was the side closest to land when in port (presumably to prevent damage to the steering oar...). By 1550 or so, landboard had given way to larboard, which rhymes nicely with starboard. Bewilderingly, illiterate British sailors have always been suckers for word-play, homophones, and rhythmic speech.

It wasn't until the mid-1800's or so that sailors collectively agreed that larboard is a silly word, and came back to their senses to use port to describe the port-side of a ship.

The origin of both words makes straightforward sense, but I think it's amazing that while one side of the ship has carried the same name for centuries, the other has taken quite a trip.