1. The Width of a Day
2. Threads

a thread from chapters I and III

Every name they have had

Two islands, at least a dozen names, in three languages and two calendars.

firstIŋaliq and Imaqłiq

In the Iñupiaq of Diomede, Little Diomede is Iŋaliq, and its people are the Iŋalit. Imaqłiq was the main village on Big Diomede, and the name is also used for the island.¹ English spellings vary: Inalik, Ignaluk.

Iŋaliq is often said to mean “the other one,” but that gloss traces back to a single travel guide, and the glossary compiled with Diomede elders does not give it.^1,2 We have not found any sourced meaning for Imaqłiq. The glossary itself warns that spellings and meanings can vary depending on who you ask.¹

August 16, 1728St Diomedes' day

Vitus Bering, a Dane exploring for Russia, sighted the islands on August 16, 1728 by the Julian calendar Russia then used: the feast day of St Diomedes. He named them after the saint.² By today's calendar, that was August 27.

around 300 ADWho was Diomedes?

Not the Greek hero of the Iliad. The islands are named for Diomedes of Tarsus, a Christian physician from what is now southern Turkey, who practiced medicine in Nicaea.⁶

The Orthodox Church remembers him as one of the Unmercenaries: healers who treated the sick and refused to be paid.⁷ He was put to death during the persecutions under the emperor Diocletian, around the beginning of the fourth century.^6,7

So two islands that a border would one day keep apart for forty years carry the name of a man remembered for helping anyone who came to him.

In 1732 the Russian surveyor Mikhail Gvozdev fixed their positions, and for a time they were also called the Gvozdev Islands.²

1816Ratmanov and Kruzenshtern

In Russian, Big Diomede is Ratmanov Island, after Makar Ratmanov: the explorer Otto von Kotzebue gave the name in 1816, thinking he had found a new island.² Little Diomede is Kruzenshtern Island.²

1867The names in the treaty

When Russia sold Alaska to the United States, the treaty drew the border along the meridian passing midway between “the islands of Krusenstern, or Ignalook, and the island of Ratmanoff, or Noonarbook.”³ Noonarbook is an old spelling of another name for Big Diomede.

nowTomorrow Island, Yesterday Island

Because the International Date Line runs between them, the two have picked up nicknames: Big Diomede is Tomorrow Island and Little Diomede is Yesterday Island.⁴ The village on Little Diomede is Diomede; its school teams have been called the Diomede Dateliners.⁵