Like most of the other maria on the Moon, Mare Frigoris was named by Giovanni Riccioli, whose 1651 nomenclature system has become standardized.
[2] Previously, William Gilbert had included it among the Insula Borealis ("Northern Island") in his map of c.1600,[3] and Michael van Langren had labelled it the Mare Astronomicum ("Sea of Astronomy") in his 1645 map.
[4] Pierre Gassendi called it the Boreum Mare ('Northern Sea').
[5]This area of the Moon featured prominently in 'Behemoth', the second episode of the 1973 BBC science fiction mini-series Moonbase 3.
[citation needed] Mare Frigoris was intended to be the original landing site of the fictionalised version of Apollo 15 in the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind, although in the show the crew decided last minute to divert the landing to Shackleton crater in the Lunar south pole upon finding out there is a high concentration of water ice in the area (a discovery not made in reality until the 1990s).