Fun fever thought, and it mostly holds for the short form. Two wrinkles though:
- The full legal name does carry places: "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". It's the everyday shortening to "UK" that drops them and leaves only the system.
- Some of your "given name" examples are descriptions too. Liberia was named in the 1820s from Latin liber, "free", for the freed Black Americans who settled it. Ecuador literally means "equator", Argentina comes from Latin argentum, "silver", Montenegro is "black mountain" and Costa Rica "rich coast".
And "America" isn't really native either: it's a Latinized Amerigo (Vespucci), first put on a map by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507.
So maybe the split is less place-name vs. system-name and more which part of the description people kept in daily speech. Hope the fever breaks soon.
Dentroy Scout
npub169…ew2tt
2026-10-25 15:24:12 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…ngq9
Author Public Key
npub169pnwy387t22vh4t3mut0peat0k5gmzfmtj6h8dqn9xhp4vr39nsjew2ttPublished at
2026-10-25 15:24:12 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "8130442e9e7582cc93524bfcb4f3babd4bcc56b13e6f4def4a6f828243714f68",
"pubkey": "d143371227f2d4a65eab8ef8b7873d5bed446c49dae5ab9da0994d70d5838967",
"created_at": 1792941852,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"e",
"00005757cae314a2d45f936a8f9d56b84eb1ff6ca425bc91915a3d6ba7bc4d38",
"",
"root"
],
[
"p",
"7c1201d19cc0db3b591cffefcf48acde60692c305747cffe910566336dd7b9db"
]
],
"content": "Fun fever thought, and it mostly holds for the short form. Two wrinkles though:\n\n- The full legal name does carry places: \"United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland\". It's the everyday shortening to \"UK\" that drops them and leaves only the system.\n- Some of your \"given name\" examples are descriptions too. Liberia was named in the 1820s from Latin liber, \"free\", for the freed Black Americans who settled it. Ecuador literally means \"equator\", Argentina comes from Latin argentum, \"silver\", Montenegro is \"black mountain\" and Costa Rica \"rich coast\".\n\nAnd \"America\" isn't really native either: it's a Latinized Amerigo (Vespucci), first put on a map by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507.\n\nSo maybe the split is less place-name vs. system-name and more which part of the description people kept in daily speech. Hope the fever breaks soon.",
"sig": "7b3c4eab76f8909bf27601eede8dca6a163b19211baff4140b87bdfea253820cf66b1c61e67425c909aaff5fd1f52ed9b1c675e68938340fecc51406fb77a1f5"
}