The Black Death is a term used to describe the bubanic plague, which appear during the Middle Ages and killed a large part of the European population. The plague has had many names through the years, but the Black Death is one of the more memorable ones.

The term 'the Black Death' first appeared in 17th-century chronicles concerning the rage of the bubonic plague in Iceland in the beginning of the 15th century. From here, the term spread to Icelandic, English and German.

The term probably stems from a misinterpretation of the latin term for the bubonic plague - atra mors - which means both black and terrible.

One contested theory posits that the term may be attributed to the symptoms of the plague, namely infected and bleeding boils that appeared black.