[jonasdegendt]

Hah nope! Even as a Belgian I find the naming of the Brussels train stations maddening. Brussels-Midi is the south station, so Brussel-Zuid. Midi allegedly means south in French, but I've never actually heard it being used over "sud", also south.

In conversation, midi also means noon (e.g. used as "meet me at noon"), which for my brain correlates more with central than south, given the context of a day.

Not a linguist, so what do I know, maybe someone else can chime in.

[forgingahead]

This is indeed the bizarre convo I was having with myself, having (allegedly) taken some French classes, I was racking my brain on which was the correct answer. We always used "sud", and Midi didn't seem to be south, eliminating Zuid (Since Zuid/Sud seemed similar), and yes Midi seems "mid-day", so maybe "Central" since it's the center of the day, but then there's "Centraal", so why would there be Centraal and "Brussels Middle"?!

So we winged it and got off at Zuid (since Noord felt wrong and Centraal definitely seemed wrong) and luckily it was the right one.

We did have a wonderful evening (perhaps too much so) the night before at a nice craft beer bar in Leuven which had 100 beers on tap, and it had just bought over by a nice young couple as well. So perhaps neither of us were in the right state that morning to navigate a confusing train map! Good memories.

[throw-the-towel]

Southern France is also called le Midi!

BTW, Ukrainian shares the same logic, but it also calls the north "midnight" (північ). Meanwhile, Armenian calls the east and west "sun exit" and "sun entrance" (արևելք, արևմուտք) respectively.

[umanwizard]

In Europe (and anywhere else north of the Tropic of Cancer), the sun is always approximately due south at noon. That’s the reason for the connection, and “midi” indeed means both south (in some contexts) and noon in French.

[jonasdegendt]

Makes a lot of sense, thanks for the insight!