• m4m4m4m4@lemmy.worldEnglish
    251·
    2 months ago

    I really wish we could actually “rename” places as their original indigenous names across all America(s). For example my country had an internal turmoil just to keep the original name of its capital city because we love our native people, and yet we keep the incredibly stupid name of “Land of Colon” (imho most probably the most stupid name of any country, ever) because fuck our native people.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      32·
      2 months ago

      Like, just the most recent indigenous names, or from one of them before that? It seems arbitrary to fixate on just one civilization just to avoid fixating on exactly one other.

      • m4m4m4m4@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        2 months ago

        I mean, not that there have been tons of successive civilizations around here, so… And yet if that was the case, you’ll need to take in account that oral lore may have had a hand in the names of places, so it’s mostly improbable that a place has had completely different names with each civilization.

        (Edit: people downvoting/replying to this thinking I was talking just about the USA is hilarious - reddit syndrome much?)

  • geogeogeo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    171·
    2 months ago

    I’m all for finding a middle ground, which is why I will call it the Gulf of Canada, USA, and Mexico. Or Gulf of C.U.M. for short.

    • Salamander@mander.xyzMEnglish
      21·
      2 months ago

      EDIT: As indepndnt mentioned in a comment below, the OP was posted on February 14, which pre-dates the wikipedia edits. So, my conclusions below about the timeline are not valid.

      Hah, sure, let’s investigate 🕵️‍♂️

      The term ‘Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl’ was added as a potential Aztec name to the English wikipedia page on February 15, 2025, by user ‘Mxn’.

      The description of the edit is the following:

      Frum says the Aztecs had no specific name for the gulf, which is plausible in a practical sense, but Fernández gives a specific religious name and is more of a reliable source on this topic

      If we investigate a bit further, we can see that the term Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl is described to be a name for the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ in the spanish Wikipedia: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl

      This page was updated to include the description of Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl as the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ in September 16, 2018. I don’t have access to the citation so I don’t know if the citation specifies if this term is still known/used.

      If you check the history you will find that the same ‘Mxn’ fixed a typo in this page on February 15, 2025.

      So, from this sequence of events it is highly likely that the term ‘Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl’ was included into the Gulf of Mexico wiki page as a result of the user Mxn performing an active search for Aztec names for the Gulf of Mexico, and finding this connection between the term an the gulf by searching on Wikipedia. This information did not come from recent news about the term being used by natives.

      I can find no evidence of native people referring to the gulf of Mexico as ‘Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl’ more frequently or at all. I can find no mention of this becoming viral in Mexico.

      I find it highly unlikely that:

      • User Mxn added an obscure Aztec term to the Wiki page two weeks ago

      AND

      • This same obscure Aztec term coincidentally began being used by Mexican natives, and this trend became popular enough to be noticed by foreign media but not by Mexican media

      More likely…

      • Mxn actively looked for a term and updated the English wiki
      • Someone read the English wiki, thought this would be a nice story, made the meme

      And this concludes my little investigation 🧐

  • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    No because it’s not a homogeneous people so it would have many different names/this wouldn’t be coordinated across NA

  • multifariace@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    You are doing it the wong way. The wight way to do it is to acknowledge the victory of the colonizers. Take Denali for example.