All right /his/, I have a task for you.
We're going to brainstorm some renamings for regions/continents that make no sense. We're also going to avoid using cardinal directions, relative positions (i.e. "middle, central"), or cultural denominations (i.e. "Latin") for the names.
Things that need to be changed:
Continents:
Europe being classified as a continent
North America
South America
Regions:
Latin America
MENA
Central Asia
South Asia
SEA
East Asia
>mexico, russia, turkey and japan are special snowflakes
>I actually meant to post this on /his/
Well, this is embarrassing.
But it's probably more on-topic here, I guess. Moving on:
The first order of business is easy. We just need to acknowledge that Europe is a subcontinent within the (actual) continent of Eurasia, named after its westernmost and easternmost population centers: The European peninsula (defined as Eurasia west of the Urals and north of the Caucasus i.e. current Europe) and the Asian subcontinent (defined as Eurasia east of the Altai mountains and Tibetan plateau, and south of the Stanovoy mountains, i.e. current East Asia: the Mongolian plateau, Manchuria, Korea and China proper). Japan, Taiwan, and the British isles are included in their respective subcontinents, of course. Asia is no longer "all of Eurasia sans Europe", hence the need to rename all of the other regions.
The rest might need some work.
I didn't make the image and I do believe it is retarded, but it's eye-catchy and related enough.
>All right /his/
Russia, Turkey and Japan aren't but we are ;3
Afroeurasia
America(s)
Australia
Antarctica
There's your continents, anything smaller is an island.
>afroeurasia.
That's gonna trigger a lot if people in Europe and maybe asia
Eurafricasia instead then :^)
This is taking longer than I thought.
North America and South America:
Renaming these two should be easy enough, given that we have two landmasses and two famous explorers (Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci) that discovered them and realized they were hiherto unknown landmasses, respectively. Unfortunately, the names America and Colombia have already been taken by two smartass countries, so we have to improvise.
Columbus actually named the newly discovered continent "Paria" after reaching the Venezuelan coast and realizing that this should be newly discovered land, so we could apply that name to either North or South America and then come up with only one more name.
Alternatively, we could use the names of two other famous explorers of the continent: Leif Erikson, the first ever European to reach the Americas, and Ferdinand Magellan, the first European to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the southern end of the Americas.
This could leave us with the names:
-Erika, or Eriksonia, for North America.
-Magellania for South America
-Paria as an alternative to either, or as a regional moniker for North America south of the US.
I know, I will never recover from this blunder.
>Afroeurasia
Dividing the continents along canals seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
North America -> ???
South America _> Amazonia
North Africa -> Africa
Subsaharan Africa -> Abyssinia
Central Asia -> Turkistan
South-east Asia -> Austronesia
North Asia -> Siberia
Central Europe -> Carpathia
Central America and Mexico -> Mayateca
Caribbean --> Carib
East Asia --> ???
India --> ???
Latin America:
The main problem with this regional term is that it is too vague to be of use.
Does it include Brazil? Quebec, Haiti, or French Guiana? Why is British America not included considering the obvious Roman influences? And the Romance languages aren't even called the Latin languages to begin with.
We have to start by deciding what we want to refer to. If we're trying to refer to culture and/or ethno-linguistic groupings, "Spanish America" and "Brazil" will do the job. If we're following the new naming convention where America refers only to the US and the continents are separate and named distinctively, then we can refer to Spanish America as "Spanish New World" or just refer to each continent (i.e. Spanish Magellania and Spanish Paria/Eriksonia or whatever other conmbination), since there's a marked difference between former New Spain and Spanish South America anyways.
If we're going to refer to geographic regions, then we can build up from the previous solution and refer to Mexico and Central America as "Paria", to the plains east of the Andes and south of the Amazonas as "Platinia", to northern South America (ex-Gran Colombia) as Granadia, to the area around and east of the Amazon (i.e. Brazil) as "Amazonia", and to the area around and west of the Andes and the Amazon "Andesia".
Thanks for contributing.
Amazonia is also a very good name for South America. North America could be named after the name Leif gave it to begin with (so Vinland/Vinlandia). And I do believe East Asia should just be named Asia at this point.
I have no qualms with Siberia, obviously, and Turkestan/Turkistan for Central Asia is serviceable, but I would prefer a name more independent to a particular ethnic group. Same with Austronesia for SEA.
I do believe that South Asia or "the Indian Subcontinent" should just be called India (which is a regional name that's historically accurate) while the country of India should rename itself back to Bharat internationally.
As for further regional divisions of Europe, I don't think it's necessary to name them anymore, since we've already established its position as a subcontinent. That's not to say that we can't (i.e., people always know what you're referring to when you say Iberia or Arabia) but it's not an imperative.
The Caribbean can stay as the Caribbean, and Mayateca is honestly not such a good name.
I know where you're coming from by naming North Africa "Africa", but at this point, I would prefer to use that name for Sub-Saharan Africa instead.
(cont.)
I think this is all the autism I had planned. I really don't know what to do with some of the other regions' names.
Gee. Renaming Central asia into Turkestan would be retarded because of tibetians and mongols.Central Asia is the most fitting name imo
MENA shouldn't be single region, instead it shoud be split between Middle east or dunno ARABIA(Turkey included) Africa (maghreb) and Persia (Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan)
Yeah, I do not like the idea of using Turkestan for Central Asia either, although in theory the Mongolian plateau would be part of (East) Asia. "Central Asia" would be the 'stans (including Uyghurstan and Afghanistan) + Tibet.
>ARABIA(Turkey included)
Please, no. Fortunately, we already have regional names for most of the region ("Levant", "Mesopotamia", "Anatolia", "Caucasus", "Arabia"). I would guess that the only real problem would be defining their borders.
>Africa (maghreb)
Why not just Maghreb, then?
>Persia (Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan)
The problem is that Persia is really just an ethnolinguistic plurality in all of these places. Iran and Afghanistan have many other non-Persian ethnic groups, and Tajikis identify themselves as Tajik mostly.
> Why not just Maghreb, then?
I just like "Africa" more.
Too bad that nowadays "African" almost exclusively brings into mind a subsaharan African, because I do agree that would be a better name (and more historical) for the region.
wh*todia
alternatively : snow niggeria
One of the reasons I wanted to post this on /his/ was that /his/ is a much slower board, and it would allow the thread to naturally last longer for more discussion.
>Subsaharan Africa -> Abyssinia
I'm triggered
If you are gonna include Azerbaijan, might as well include Turkey. It's probably more European (I use this term loosely), too.
>South-east Asia -> Austronesia
Triggered
Mainland SEA except malay penisula should join East Asia region.
Malay Archipelago+malay penisula should be called Nusantara.
Philippines is Oceania.
>Mainland SEA except malay penisula should join East Asia region.
You can make a case for Vietnam, but that's about it.
>Malay Archipelago+malay penisula should be called Nusantara.
Nice, I didn't know of this term.