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The Naming of America (2023)

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Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#61

Post by Izkata »

JohnMakin wrote: post #55
allknowingfrog wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time when "Black" was considered offensive and "African-American" was the generally-approved nomenclature. You seem to be implying that the "-American" pattern emerged as some sort of white conspiracy to paint everyone else as less American, but my understanding is that the opposite is true. Language and social preferences evolve over time, and that one has simply come and gone as the "correct" option of…

> There was a time when "Black" was considered offensive and "African-American" was the generally-approved nomenclature. Eh, this is a little inaccurate - I don't think anyone but white people worked themselves up about this, and the distinction between "black" and "african american" was made because Americans with slave ancestry are not the only people who have dark skin color. It's also still in use and hasn't gone…

Whether or not it was mainly white people who did this, I do remember when I was a kid (late 90s/early 2000s) there was a hard push to just swap "black" for "African-American" no matter how little sense it made, because "black" was considered offensive. It's how we got one particular addition to the "ignorant American" meme videos, where people would go on vacation to Europe or Africa and call a black person born and living there "African-American". It's also why Elon Musk generally isn't considered African-American, even though he has a better claim to the label than most.

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#62

Post by joegibbs »

n4r9 wrote: post #40

> to hear Armorica, the ancient Gaulish name meaning place by the sea This line gave me synchronicity shivers. There's a recent SMBC comic that's been linked a few times on HN recently: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/arthur . The other day it sent me down a minor rabbit hole reading about Brittany, where I stumbled upon this map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany#/media/File:Britonia6... . I (a Brit) thought…

It's an interesting coincidence that Armorica sounds like America but I don't think it's very indicative of anything more than that - there are probably a lot of places that sound like "America". There is a Georgia in the US and a Georgia in the Caucasus with totally different etymologies. There's also an Albania in the Caucasus and Scotland was known in ancient times as Albania - and neither is etymologically related to the Balkan Albania. There's also a Galicia in Spain (with a similar root to the Gauls) and a Galicia in Poland and Ukraine (which could possibly be Celtic, but could also be of Slavic origin).

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#63

Post by SllX »

sbassi wrote: post #54
cyberax wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two countries with the words "United States" in the name: the USA and Mexico. There is only one country with the word "America" in it. So "America" as an informal name for the USA is appropriate.

it is not appropriate for non-US people since the name "America" clash with how they name the continent (America), so they believe that Americans are "stealing" the name of the continent for themselves. While Americans don't think so because they don't even think there is such a continent, there are 2 continents for them.

As an American, I believe continents are a useless fiction that don’t properly account for how land is actually divided on the crust of the Earth and disregards small continental areas which ought to be accounted for if we’re to believe Europe and Asia are different continents. There are also two different six continent models taught in the world in addition to the seven continent model I was taught: Europe and Asia as Eurasia and North and South America as the Americas.

Personally I don’t care what you call us in other languages, but in English it’s just “Americans”.

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#64

Post by Izkata »

sbassi wrote: post #54
cyberax wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two countries with the words "United States" in the name: the USA and Mexico. There is only one country with the word "America" in it. So "America" as an informal name for the USA is appropriate.

it is not appropriate for non-US people since the name "America" clash with how they name the continent (America), so they believe that Americans are "stealing" the name of the continent for themselves. While Americans don't think so because they don't even think there is such a continent, there are 2 continents for them.

> since the name "America" clash with how they name the continent (America)

There are two continents, "North America" and "South America". To refer to the whole, you pluralize it as "the Americas".

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#65

Post by throaway915 »

joegibbs wrote: post #62
n4r9 wrote: post #40

> to hear Armorica, the ancient Gaulish name meaning place by the sea This line gave me synchronicity shivers. There's a recent SMBC comic that's been linked a few times on HN recently: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/arthur . The other day it sent me down a minor rabbit hole reading about Brittany, where I stumbled upon this map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany#/media/File:Britonia6... . I (a Brit) thought…

It's an interesting coincidence that Armorica sounds like America but I don't think it's very indicative of anything more than that - there are probably a lot of places that sound like "America". There is a Georgia in the US and a Georgia in the Caucasus with totally different etymologies. There's also an Albania in the Caucasus and Scotland was known in ancient times as Albania - and neither is etymologically relate…

Also Iberia in the Caucasus and Iberian peninsula

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#66

Post by WalterBright »

> To question the origin of America's name is to question the nature of not only our history lessons but our very identity as Americans.

It's the idea of what being an American stands for that matters, not the origin of the word.

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#67

Post by JohnMakin »

Izkata wrote: post #61
JohnMakin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a time when "Black" was considered offensive and "African-American" was the generally-approved nomenclature. Eh, this is a little inaccurate - I don't think anyone but white people worked themselves up about this, and the distinction between "black" and "african american" was made because Americans with slave ancestry are not the only people who have dark skin color. It's also still in use and hasn't gone…

Whether or not it was mainly white people who did this, I do remember when I was a kid (late 90s/early 2000s) there was a hard push to just swap "black" for "African-American" no matter how little sense it made, because "black" was considered offensive. It's how we got one particular addition to the "ignorant American" meme videos, where people would go on vacation to Europe or Africa and call a black person born and…

These narratives were not driven by black people. I know what you are referring to. It was never considered an offensive term by anyone who had any stake in it, it was purely contrived and performative nonsense for being “aware” when it was signaling only that they absolutely were not. Just my 2c as a PoC

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#68

Post by jolmg »

bentley wrote: post #49
jaimebuelta wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, there’s a word in Spanish for people from the USA that’s “Estadounidense”, literally “Unitedstatian” which is widely used (at least in Spain) I find it a fascinating word and a way of precisely naming to keep the “American” word to be more broadly applicable, at least in theory

Do people of Estados Unidos Mexicanos count as estadounidense?

No

https://dle.rae.es/estadounidense

https://dem.colmex.mx/Ver/estadounidense

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#69

Post by pessimizer »

adventured wrote: post #58
psunavy03 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is argued" is a weaselly phrase that means nothing. It is argued that the Earth is flat, too. What's the evidence and what is the academic consensus?

Academic consensus is nearly as bad to rely upon as "it is argued." There may be more honesty in "it is argued." Academia has been overloaded with fraud for many decades. What's the value of a consensus of weasels?

Nothing is as bad as "it has been argued" other than "it could be argued."

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#70

Post by freetime2 »

psunavy03 wrote: post #44
jmclnx wrote: post #38

>A black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago , and influenced the development of Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations This is a new one on me. Maybe it could it have happened, but I very much doubt it. This seems to go back to the usual thing of "Native Americans were too dumb to build a civilization". If anyone got to the Americas before people crossing the Atlantic, i…

"It is argued" is a weaselly phrase that means nothing. It is argued that the Earth is flat, too. What's the evidence and what is the academic consensus?

To be fair, the author is definitely not arguing that America was discovered by Africans 3000 years ago. He is just providing some background regarding the controversy of who discovered and named the Americas. He also writes:

> Further, other discoveries of America have been credited to the Irish who had sailed to a land they called Iargalon, the land beyond the sunset, and to the Phoenicians who purportedly came here before the Norse.

I think his use of "it has been argued", "have been credited to", and "purportedly" in this context are not weaselly, and are fine in reference to unsubstantiated arguments that people have made. The author is clear though that the only two undisputed discoveries of the Americas prior to Columbus were by the Asian forebears of Native Americans and the Norse:

> They were of course preceded by the pre-historic Asian forebears of Native Americans, who migrated across some ice-bridge in the Bering Straits or over the stepping stones of the Aleutian Islands.

> the remains of an 11th-century Norse settlement in Newfoundland, excavated in the 1960s, that forms the only undisputed evidence of the first European presence in the New World.

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