The Term Black Death Was Not Used At That Time

The first fact about the Black Death is that it was not called Black Death at the time. Pestis or pestilentia ('pestilence'), epidemia ('epidemic'), and mortalitas ('mortality') were used by Latin writers at the time to describe the disease throughout Europe. Despite the fact that death was long connected with the color black, the 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to as "black" in any European language in the 14th or 15th centuries. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Danish and Swedish writers and historians popularized the phrase, from whence it spread to other languages over time. It was translated from Danish as 'den sort dd,' which means 'the black death.'

It came from a poem by Simon de Covinus, in which the disease was referred to as "atra mors." This refers to the awful death, also known as the black death. This phrase was translated into English as the Black Death in the sixteenth century, and the moniker was used to distinguish it from the Great Plague of 1665.