Re: OT: Renaming the continents

lblissett writes:
 > ----- Original Message -----
 > From: "Tim May" <butsuri@...>
 > To: <CONLANG@...>
 > Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2002 4:55 PM
 > Subject: Renaming the continents
 >
 >
 > [snip]
 >
 > > So what would make good names for places?  Ideally indigenous names
 > > would be a good start (except for Antarctica, for obvious reasons).
 > > But did anyone in the Americas or Australia have enough of a grasp of
 > > the large-scale to name them?  And I doubt anyone had a word
 > > for "Eurasia + Africa" before 1492 that wasn't synonymous with
 > > "Earth".
 >
 >            It depends. Are you going for "fair and reasonable" or
 > are you going for "realistic"? Because realistically, I don't think
 > the continents would be named by gathering together the
 > represenatives of each and concluding that names should be
 > organized according to the size, orientation, and native
 > description. The naming would probably have more to do with the
 > history of cartography, trade networks, population movements, and
 > power struggles in the alternate-history and less to do with how
 > someone would describe the planet from orbit.
 >

Of course, and so they are in Robinson's book (the names are, there,
mostly Chinese).  But I am thinking of a rational system with the
benefit of hindsight, rather than of how they would end up in any
particular alternate history.