The world is considering renaming United States on their maps. As the indigenous people discovered and explored the land thousands of years before the first Europeans, it’s fitting that they should do it. Many nations made up the area. Is there any name that would be representitive of all?
There’s an argument that could be made for Iroquoia or Haudenosaunee. The Iroquois Confederacy was an alliance of five different native tribes who cooperated and jointly made decisions for hundreds of years before European colonists arrived, and that confederacy did serve as a point of reference when the earliest drafts of the Constitution were being written.
That said, the US is absolutely massive and there are way too many tribes with different languages and cultures. No one word is going to be a good fit for everything.
A lot of indigenous in Australia have adopted “Country” - there’s small c country, which is the standard geographical meaning eg: Australia as a whole, then there’s big C Country, which basically means “this place where we have gathered for this occasion” (hence Welcome to Country, which has the bonus of making dickhead recidivists foam at the mouth and fall over themselves demonstrating their own poor literacy skills)
Another user said ‘Turtle Island’ - I’m voting for that too! I just love that name to bits! 🥰🐢🤗
Turtle island is the indigenous name for the whole of the continent though. Similar to how they already call themselves America I guess lol.
So turtlebody, north turtle, center turtle, ?
United turtle, common I feel there is a name to find here, great turtle, the grand turtle,
Maybe Turtle-Head Island.
How do you say shit hole in Iroquois?
New England.
Canada’s Head.
Mexico’s Hair.
Canadas butt
As the head, Mexico is the beard. As the butt… Well… Kinda insulting to Mexico.
Not really, as legs they get to walk away
Fuck Trump in any native american language will suffice
Canada
That is an indigenous word.
I think theyre saying it should all be called Canada (meaning settlement) including present day US.
deleted by creator
Burgertory
I’ve long been a fan of Turtle Island.
YES! - I love that idea too! 👌✅🤗
That’s not the US though
the name of the continent and the country in English both come from the “explorer.” might as well go all the way and have the continent of Turtle Island and the country of the United States of Turtle Island assuming we’re renaming the existing country and not a new union of First Nations
how about Testudineland. I feel it flows better.
kʷədub swatixʷtəd
Means stolen land in Lushootseed. But, any native language, or all native languages would be acceptable.
We can abbreviate it to K-Dub! Or maybe kʷə for those either have an expanded keyboard or are willing to copy-paste or find the superscript tool in whatever app they’re using or whatever. Kind of like how people shorten the country’s full name to America or the USA or the U.S.
(edited)
Any pointer to an audio-file for that phrase?
The Internet says this is the phonetic pronunciation
kwuh-doob swah-tee-hw-tuhd
Which is absolutely worthless, especially if it is based on English pronunciation, which is basically random. That’s why I was asking for an audio file.
Bro how the fuck is that supposed to help me pronounce it?
This is exactly the type of answer I was hoping to see a lot more of. Stuff actually in native language.
People’s Democratic Republic of North America
How about Federal United Corporation of Kingdom States
*Corporate Kingdom Of States
The Of is capitalised. Very important
Sponsored by…?
Brawndo
I love* how — in true stupid fashion — they’re naming things after America, which isn’t even the country’s name. We’re the United States of America, just one of several countries located on the North American continental plate.
That said in answer to your question that is a tough one because there are so many unrelated language families in NA. I’d probably pick something either Algonkian or iriquoian. Nituskeenan means “our land” in Cree, for example, and sounds kinda cool.
* I do not love this.
While as an American (the continent) I find that annoying, their country name IS America. For example, these are some other countries full names:
- Republic of the United States of Brazil (until 1930, now it’s Federative Republic of Brazil)
- Kingdom of Spain
- Argentine Republic
- United States of Venezuela
- Oriental Republic of Uruguay
Etc, a lot of countries have a long name that explains what type of government they run and then the actual name of the country, the United States of Venezuela is a country named Venezuela that was formed by a coalition of states, I know nothing of Venezuela but because of its name I can imagine states have some autonomy in their ruling. And similarly United States of America is a country named America that was formed by a coalition of states, they just decided to name their country after the continent they’re in making life difficult for the future generations.
While here in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we apparently shortened it to just the type of government, like we’re the only kingdom or something.
AFAIK UK is the only country that’s named “United Kingdom of something” and it’s shorter than Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so it doesn’t need disambiguation.
Yeah, also not aware of any united kingdoms, there are other kingdoms though. I guess people know what it is at this point
Wouldn’t it be poetic if the rest of the countries on these continents ‘maliciously complied’ by going all-in adopting the term “American”?
“American tacos” and “American Cerveza” sold with the Mexican flag on it, “American bacon”, “American Whiskey” and “American maple syrup” with the Canadian flag, etc.
Leave the population of USA orphaned without a collective name for themselves.
I always fully qualify North America, since there’s South America it makes sense. For some reason Central America is reserved for that tiny connecty bit, so now Canada has to be North-North America geographically; sorry. Maybe something like Polar America would sound nicer. This is assuming of course that Canada takes the logical step of splitting off their country from South-North America with a healthy small ocean or something
Yes but to play devil’s advocate, no other country uses “America” in their name and the word is synonymous with the USA in English.
deleted by creator
No, to any English speaker. When anyone says “America” you understand that they mean the United States of America regardless of how you feel about the term.
mu
Their aspiration is to rule over all of America.
Dumbfuckistan
There are waaaaay more tribes than that.
I know it was the only map I’ve found with a good format for Lemmy
So convenient that the Pomo and Chumash kept such strict linear borders we still use them for California to this day.
Interesting. Miami is indigenous. It may be a good choice as it’s already a place name and possibly less objectionable to the US Americans.
Pawnee it is
But they asked about a name for the whole country
This is an example showing there isn’t a concept of a whole country to stsrt from because it was split into separate groups that were not united.
There were also a lot of different languages. It would be like asking for a European named for Europe.
There were also a lot of different languages. It would be like asking for a European named for Europe.
To offer something of a counterpoint: is there any European language that doesn’t call Europe some variation of “Europa”? Europe has dozens of languages that developed in relative isolation, but a fairly consistent name for the continent was pushed into all of them.
More info: The term did not originally refer to a unified continent but was gradually expanded by Greek geographers and historians like Herodotus to distinguish the western lands from Asia and Libya (Africa). It was not until the Middle Ages and the Carolingian Renaissance that “Europe” solidified as a distinct cultural and political identity linked to Christianity and the former Western Roman Empire, evolving from a vague regional descriptor into the modern continental concept.
It’s right there at the top: Native American Tribes, or NAT
