The word north is related to the Old High German nord[1], both descending

from the Proto-Indo-European unit ner-, meaning "down" (or "under").

(Presumably[according to whom?] a natural primitive description of its concept is "to
the left of the rising sun".)
The Latin word borealis comes from the Greek boreas "north wind, north",
which, according to Ovid, was personified as the son of the river-god
Strymon, the father of Calais and Zetes. Septentrionalis is from
septentriones, "the seven plow oxen", a name of Ursa Maior. The Greek
(arktiks) is named for the same constellation, and is the source
of the English word Arctic.
Other languages have other derivations. For example, in Lezgian, kefer can
mean both "disbelief" and "north", since to the north of the Muslim Lezgian
homeland there are areas formerly inhabited by non-Muslim Caucasian and
Turkic peoples. In many languages of Mesoamerica, north also means
"up". In Hungarian the word for north is szak, which is derived from
jszaka ("night"), since above the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun never shines
from the north, except inside the Arctic Circle during the summer midnight
sun.
The direction north is often associated with colder climates because most
of the world's land at high latitudes is located in the Northern Hemisphere.