this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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I'm not American. But also, most place names are like this, they've just been through enough years of language changes and conquests for the obviousness to be obscured. Beijing and Tokyo are "northern capital" and "eastern capital" respectively, for example. Hawai'i either is named after the guy that discovered the big island or just means "homeland". "Denali" means "tall"
Of course, but that was back in the days when travelling to the next village over had a different dialect, by the time you were three villages over, the language would start to shift, so there is a great diversity in names because of a diversity in language. The US everything is english (with a little spanish and native languages but not enough) so it kind of ruins it.