Re: OT: Renaming the continents

Tim May wrote:
>As for the rest, the only serious problem is Eurasia.  Europe just
>isn't a continent in the same way that the others are, so "continent"
>has to be awkwardly defined in such a way as to include it (in
>English, at least).  Europe is a region which can be defined
>physically or culturally, and it's a useful term, but I don't see any
>good reason to include it in a set with Africa, Antarctica etc.  And
>Asia doesn't seem to have any defining characteristics apart from
>being the land that's east of Europe.  So I'd rather have a name for
>Eurasia, and subdivide it into a number of sections, including Europe,
>and probably the Indian subcontinent, China, etc.
If you search the list archives for "continent names" or some such, you
should be able to locate a couple of old threads about this kind of issues.
In particular, you should find a couple of posts explaining the Swedish
distinction between _kontinenter_ and _världsdelar_.

Very basically, {Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, America, Antarctica} are
considered to form a set of traditional geographical divisions, whereas
{Eurasia, Africa, Australia, North America, South America, Antarctica} is
the set of actual continents.

>*  Which natives to take it from, of course, is a difficult problem in
>    itself.  But first I want to find out if _any_ natives had an
>    applicable term, before I start deciding which to use, if any.
I somehow doubt there is any such term that's not either an outright loan
from an European language or coined as a counterpart to European "America".
Pre-Columbian inhabitants can't've had any much real use for a word
designating the American continent(s). The best place to look for might be
Yupik - they must've at any rate have words for the Chukchi Peninsula and
Alaska; possibly these can/could serve as designations for the entireties of
Eurasia and (North) America.

                                                   Andreas

                                            Andreas

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