The word شمال / shmel in our dialect in Lebanon means both north and left. That may sound odd, but it really isn’t. Today when we look at a map North is always up, but that wasn’t always the case. Many cultures oriented themselves facing east towards the sunrise. The word ‘orientate’ literally means to face east (orient.)
When you do that, face east, your left hand points north and your right hand points south. Then the word shmel for both left and north starts to make sense. Take the T-O maps from medieval Europe as an example. They place East at the top, not north. It’s called T-O because it’s an O with an T inside it with Asia on top, Europe left, and Africa right.
You’ll find this logic in other languages too. In Sanskrit, दक्षिणा (dakshina) means both right and south. In Irish, ‘deas’ means right, and you’ve got ‘deisceart’ that means south. Both words are of the same root.
Now closer to home, look at the Middle East, with east facing up. There is a very valid theory that يمن / Yemen got its name from يمين [Ya-meen] in Arabic, which means the right. And شام / Sham, the Levant, is the opposite, having come from شمال (She-mal in Modern Standard Arabic, Shmel in Lebanese), which is the left. Now Standard Arabic does make a small difference. شِمال / shimal is left and شَمال / shamal is north. Though both eventually the same.
I will add one last note about the west as a direction. In Arabic it’s الغرب / Al-Gharb, the place of the sunset. And if you’re facing east, it’s the place behind us, which explains how we got words like غريب / Ghareeb or stranger, someone who came from behind without us seeing them. Or غربة / ghurba, estrangement or the land you’re in when you’re far away from home.
So a map may say north is up, but sometimes language remembers otherwise.
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