Re: OT: Renaming the continents

Nik Taylor wrote:
>Tim May wrote:
> > Recently I've been reading _The Years of Rice and Salt_ by Kim Stanley
> > Robinson.  It's an interesting work of alternate history, with which
> > no doubt many here are familiar.  Looking at the unfamiliar names on
> > the world map (in the novel, European civilizaton is effectively
> > destroyed by the Black Death, so our Latinate designations are
> > forgotten or never created) I wondered what might be an "ideal" set of
> > names for the landmasses of our planet.
>
>Old             New
>North America   Northwestland*
>South America   Southwestland*
>Eurasia         Greatland
>Africa          Originland
>Australia       Littleland
>Antarctica      Southland
>
>Alternately: North Hourglassland and South Hourglassland, as, with a bit
>of imagination, the Americas have a kind of hourglass appearance.
If some sort of "neutrality" is to be sought for here, N/S Hourglassland is
better that North-/Southwestland, since the later kind of implies an
Atlantic (or perhaps Greenwich Meridian) perspective.

In "Shikasta", Doris Lessing has a set of alternative continent-names used
by aliens studying the earth. North America is IIRC "the Isolated Northern
Continent", Europe "the Northwestern Rimlands". Perhaps somebody who owns
the book can check out and complete the list?

                                              Andreas

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