Grab em by the vespussi
Comment on Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps.
redsparks2025@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The word “America” is not reserved for the USA alone and belongs to the entire Americas: North America, Central America, South America. As such if they want to rename the Gulf of Mexico then it should be the Gulf of North America of which both the USA and Mexico are a part of and share borders around that body of water.
Furthermore the word “America” isn’t an English word but the German bastardization of an Italian word. Specifically the word “America” was coined by Martin Waldseemüller a German cartographer who named the Americas after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci who explored the new continents for Spain and Portugal.
Amerigo Vespucci - History Cartoon ~ Innovative History ~ YouTube.
So if this is the big orange blow-fish’s attempt to dis on Mexico then it’s pretty petty much like everything he does to massage his massive ego.
invertedspear@lemm.ee 1 week ago
You wanna know what’s cool about language? It changes over time. So while the origin of a word may mean one thing, it can eventually mean something else as well or even something entirely different. Cool used to just mean temperature, but it eventually also came to refer to the attitude of a person or even how likable they are in common usage. Nimrod was a mythical hunter but thanks to Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd now means a stupid person. Same with “America” referring originally a set of continents. In common usage it has come to mean referencing the United States of America, mostly because people are lazy and is so much easier to say “American” than it is to describe something as “from the United States of America”. You can resist the change all you want, but eventually you sound like some old person that says automobile instead of car since car originally meant an individual portion of a train.
13roses@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The US keeps it to flex on all the other American countries. It’s a display of dominance.
fogelmensch@lemmy.world 1 week ago
So it’s the gulf of Germany. Got it. Ü
CitizenKong@lemmy.world 1 week ago
VW Golf.