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Americans are citizens of a nameless country!

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persian85033
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08 Jul 2010, 1:16 pm

Blindspot149 wrote:
Most people refer to the country that lies between Canada and Mexico as either:

US/United States, USA/United States of America

None of these identify this country for the following reasons:

Brazil is composed of 'States' and is located in 'The Americas'

Mexico is also composed of 'States' so even 'The United States of North America' is inapporpriate.

United States (of what?) :!:

I suppose there might be a claim to the name America from Amerigo Vespucci, but it is as absurd to call the country between Canada and Mexico 'America' as it would be to call France (or any other European country) 'Europe'.

What are your thoughts? (wherever you come from :roll: )


Maybe they just couldn't come up with a better name? Or they didn't want to use one of the names from the native languages?

The name 'Canada' means 'village' or 'settlement' in Laurentian. Another theory is that Spanish and Portugese explorers were unable to find gold, so they marked it on their maps as 'cá nada', 'acá nada'.

'Mexico' comes from the Nahuatl language, but it's meaning isn't known. A theory for the etymology of Mexico is that it means 'Place at the Center of the Lake Moon'. Another, Mēxihtli, the Aztec goddess of war, with Mexico meaning 'place where Mēxihtli lives'.

Either for sure is not really known. Those are just two theories for each.

NeverEnder wrote:
However, it was later realized that Amerigo’s friend, the Spanish explorer, Christopher Columbus, had been there a few years earlier in 1492. But it was too late to rename the country Columbia.


I think Columbus was Italian.


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Tim_Tex
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08 Jul 2010, 1:58 pm

He was Italian, but sailed for Spain. He was hired by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.


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