LL-L "Names" 2005.10.20 (02) [E]

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20 October 2005 * Volume 02
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From: Szelog, Mike <Mike.Szelog at cfgcustomers.com>
Subject: LL-L "Names" 2005.10.19 (05) [E]

Well, I can't speak for the entire US, but as far as the Abenaki go, all the
land that is now the Maritimes, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, part of Québec,
all of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and northern Massachusetts is called
"N'dakina" - it means, simply, "our land". I don't know that there is a word
for the continent as a whole, though post European settlement, to say
"America" or "United States" in Abenaki, it's "Bastoniki" (which comes from
the French "Bostonais" after Boston in Massachusetts.

Mike S
Manchester, NH - USA (N'dakina)

***
From: Mag. Karl-Heinz Lorenz <karl-heinz.lorenz at gmx.net>
Subject: LL-L "Names" 2005.10.19 (03) [E]

For me the name America is derived from an European person, just as was
Rhodesia or is Columbia etc. I wonder if the aborigines have an own name for

what is now the US, central-America, north-America, south-America and
America as a whole.

----------

From: Isaac M. Davis <isaacmacdonalddavis at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Names" 2005.10.19 (03) [E]


Ingmar Roerdinkholder wrote:

> I think the Spanish speaking people(s) of Central American would have
> more rights historically to call themselves just Americans than the
> inhabitants of the USA, because the first part of the New World that was
> "discovered" by Columbus c.s. was of course the island Hispaniola, and
> named after Americo Vespucchi(?).

 Or maybe Richard Amerik.

> Richard Amerik was the chief customs official in late 15th century
> Bristol. Of Welsh birth or extraction, his name was possibly derived from
> "ap Meriug", or "son of Meurig."
>
> The case for America being named after him goes like this: Duty
> collecting having apparently been a lucrative occupation, Amerik was the
> principal investor in John Cabot's transatlantic expedition of 1497. Cabot
> allegedly repaid the favour by naming the newly discovered continent in
> Amerik's honour.

Source: http://www.100welshheroes.com/en/biography/richardamerik

Paul Finlow-Bates wrote:

> It is named after explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who managed to pre-empt
> Columbus and have his name applied to two continents (at that time
> though, it wasn't clear how many continents there were).  The whole
> "New World" was America, and the fledgeling revolutionary republic
> called itself the United States of America, because they were United
> States, and they were in America.  The USA has no more claim on
> the name "America" than the Republic of South Africa does on "Africa".

See above for an alternate theory on the naming of America.

> Incidentally, Columbus has to content himself with a South American
> republic, a Canadian province, and a few towns across the USA!

Actually, I think the province (British Columbia) was named after the 
Columbia River, which in turn was named after the ship of Robert Gray, "the 
first white man to see the Columbia River". I think that his ship was called 
that because Columbia is sometimes used to mean America, and he was an 
American (from the USA). So maybe I'm wrong to say it's not named after 
Columbus, but there are a lot more steps in between.

Karl-Heinz Lorenz wrote:

> For me the name America is derived from an European person, just as
> was Rhodesia or is Columbia etc. I wonder if the aborigines have an own
> name for what is now the US, central-America, north-America, south-
> America and America as a whole.

I don't know about elsewhere in the Americas, but in my region (eastern 
woodlands), the name Turtle Island has some currency. It's based on a legend 
that the world (the continent of North America) is on the back of a giant 
turtle.

Isaac M. Davis

**
Westron wynd, when wilt thou blow
The smalle rain down can rain
Christ yf my love were in my arms
And I yn my bed again

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Names

Folks,

While not really answering Karl-Heinz's question and containing numerous 
errors due to a bad OCR job, the following article may be of interest to 
you:

"The Naming of North America"
http://www.manataka.org/page263.html

For one man's views:

The Native American Heritage of Marc "Dances with Owls" McCord"
http://canoeman.com/ancestors/docs/ancestors.html

I hardly think that early indigenous peoples of the Americas had a concept 
of their continents* as a whole.  (*North and South America are counted as 
two continents on this side of the Atlantic, as one in Europe, and Mexico is 
considered North American in North America.)  At most they knew of their own 
lands, the lands of their neighbors, the lands they coveted and the lands 
they had been told about by travelers.  They same applies to Australia, 
which even early European colonists did not recognize as a single continent 
until later.  The concept of "America" was later borrowed, such as Ts'alagi 
(Cherokee) ᎠᎺᏖᎦ _Ameliga_.  However, it has been claimed that the Cuna 
language of Panama has been using _Awya Yala_ ("Land of Full Maturity") for 
the entirety of the Americas, and this is why some indigenous activists want 
to introduce it to other languages, such as Quechua.

Thus, giving names to the continents seems justified, while the naming 
method may be debatable.  Not so in cases like that of New Zealand, for 
which the long settled Maori population already had the name Aotearoa ("Land 
of the Long White Cloud"), ignored by the Europeans and replaced by a name 
after a European region.  I suppose this is a long-standing tactic of which 
we find, for instance, evidence in Germanic and Romance substitutions for 
earlier Celtic and Basque names in Europe.

This also goes for rivers, mountains, etc., especially those that have much 
spiritual or other types of meaning in the area, such as Mount Chomolangma 
(~ Chomolungma < Tibetan ཇོམོགྤངམརི _ Jo-mo glang-ma ri_, Nepali सगरमाथा 
_Sagarmatha_) which came to be named Mount Everest despite such knowledge. 
More respect for indigenous cultures has led to reversion to some native 
names in Australia, foremost "Ayers Rock" now being "Uluru" again.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

P.S.: Our list server seems to be on the fritz today.  By the time you 
receive this it will hopefully snapped out of it. 

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