Re: OT: Renaming the continents

Andreas Johansson writes:
 > Tim May wrote:
 > [...]
 >
 > 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.
 >
Yes, I remember this conversation.  The situation seems much
preferable to that which prevails in English.

 > >*  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.
 >
That is a very interesting suggestion.