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Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

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Re: Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

#41

Post by butokai »

graemep wrote: post #22

Lots of countries change the names of things, even countries themselves.. Bombay to Mumbai, Ceylon to Sri Lanka, Turkey to Türkiye etc. Yes, some of those are specific to a name in a particular language and all have precedents rather than being entirely new. However, it is a precedent for governments deciding the names of things. This, as its just made up, reminds me a lot of political/nationalist renaming of things…

I feel like instances of this kind of decision (also from your examples) fall into two groups: replacing names from colonization with local names, and... Second group name left as an exercise to the reader.

Re: Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

#43

Post by kijashdkujdfhas »

maxerickson wrote: post #38
throw0101a wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> November is going to be a historic electoral wipeout. So you have faith in the average American voter? (Or at least a plurality of them?)

I feel like I am not good at anticipating election results, but anyway, the people arguing that the midterms will be a referendum on the economy make sense to me. Expensive gas and groceries are pretty unpopular. I guess some chunk of people will find a way to wholly blame Biden or whatever.

> I guess some chunk of people will find a way to wholly blame Biden or whatever.

Markwayne Mullin, DHS Secretary, just yesterday:

“You have a Biden administration that is failing the American people because they are allowing millions of people to come into this country illegally.”

20 months in to a 48 month term and they're still blaming the last guy, and phrasing it as if the last guy is still actively doing things other than having cancer.

The whole admin is a bunch of clowns. And unfortunately they benefit from a right wing media machine that reinforces the nonsense, and a general media environment that is more than willing to sanewash and downplay.

Re: Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

#44

Post by kijashdkujdfhas »

charcircuit wrote: post #36
cebert wrote: post #3

I apologize to my Canadian friends. This is embarrassing.

Why not choose to feel patriotic about the decision. It gives us recognition for what we've done with the body of water. Arguably the fact that you feel embarrassed or need to apologize shows the lack of patriotism you feel over the body of water, so I think this new name can help future people feel patriotic over it. There is a lot of power in a name.

The name is older than the US or Canada.

Re: Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

#45

Post by andrewaylett »

ben_w wrote: post #4
karussell wrote: post #2

See: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1206310 name:en=Lake Ontario vs. official_name:en-US=Lake America

Makes me wonder, has North Korea or Iran made an equivalent declaration about naming the USA "사탄의 겨드랑이" or "زیر بغل شیطان"? (Google Translate from "Satan's armpit"). I mean, if temper tantrums by the supreme executive are allowed and all.

It seems that there are 363,123 `official_name:` tags in OSM [1], and the discussion thread hints that at least some* of them are due to naming disputes. Given (according to the thread) no-one actually renders the tag on their maps, using that tag in this case seems like a good policy.

[1]: https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/official_name#overvie...

Re: Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

#46

Post by swed420 »

gizajob wrote: post #37
swed420 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but it's also Trump and the GOP self-immolating. November is going to be a historic electoral wipeout. > I expect the next administration will push through some laws limiting this sort of idiocy. The problem is that the bar is now so low that basically anybody will win, by design. They'll pass some surface level bullshit to treat symptoms, like how lakes can or cannot be renamed. But they'll fail to address an…

*American Democracy

> *American Democracy

Not according to the link above, and the growing array of solvable yet perpetually unsolved problems in other countries.

Re: Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

#47

Post by Steve16384 »

roenxi wrote: post #14

This is an improvement on starting a war on oil markets and getting I've-lost-count-how-many innocents killed in the Middle East. So in many ways this could be considered a step up for US foreign policy. If Trump can stick to low-stakes pettiness that would be a real win for us all.

He's doing this as well as all the wars.

Re: Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

#48

Post by bufbupa »

This feels like the right-wing equivalent of pronoun policing lol. Crazy how the extremes of the political spectrum are so close to each other (like a horseshoe), yet hate each other so much. Doesn't seem like the polarization is near to ratcheting down though, at least not by judging from the comments in this thread.

Re: Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

#49

Post by bakies »

butokai wrote: post #40

I am Italian, and we get quite pissed when the government issues executive orders (the head of state can't do it), although it happens relatively often. I live in France, and when the president resorted to using them it felt like he was threatening democracy. The US mechanism seems the strongest of the three, and people have considered this a normal thing in a democracy long enough for this to happen.

Executive Orders really aren't that powerful. They can only command the executive branch to do something and are not legislature at all. Trump is certainly proving you can get pretty creative with enforcement to enact terror though, I'd agree to that.

Re: Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

#50

Post by Gormo »

graemep wrote: post #22

Lots of countries change the names of things, even countries themselves.. Bombay to Mumbai, Ceylon to Sri Lanka, Turkey to Türkiye etc. Yes, some of those are specific to a name in a particular language and all have precedents rather than being entirely new. However, it is a precedent for governments deciding the names of things. This, as its just made up, reminds me a lot of political/nationalist renaming of things…

Attempts by political states to attempt to nationalize the vernacular should be ignored and rejected in all cases.

The examples you're citing are less ridiculous than these recent stunts, but still should be considered in terms of their intentions and effects.

What's the motivation for trying to detatch the name of something from its existing understanding and historical context?

Why should the attempts to "rebrand" an entire country or geographical feature made by a government -- a particular instituion within society, usually under the control of one narrow faction in opposition to others -- be respected by the whole of society within that country, let alone by people in foreign countries speaking a different language?

Why should, for example, the Turkish government -- which operates in the Turkish language, where "Türkiye" already was the standard name of their country -- be respected in its attempt to get English speakers to write the country's name in orthography that is not readily pronounceable by English speakers, and using characters that aren't standard on our keyboard layouts?

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