rename america

sorabji.com: I need advice: rename america
By Weroanza on Saturday, September 15, 2001 - 06:21 pm:

    it's a new world. there will be a fundamental change in the u.s.'s place in it. so they say. i, personally, hope that's true. i think we've spent too long being a european offshoot. the old world is too much of a hassle - the fault, dear brutus, is not in our foreign policy, but with the fact that nobody in the old world can run their countries without something going wrong that we are somehow obligated to correct.

    well, i've had enough.

    the first thing we have to do is get a new name. everybody knows we've never had a proper name. we need an american name.

    in 1584, sir walter raleigh sent two ships to america on sort of a reconnaissance mission for a proposed colony. (this is before jamestown.) the ships landed on the shores of north carolina - in pamlico sound near roanoke island. the native people there, algonquians who had never seen a white man, were friendly and curious. a tribal elder, a man named granginameo, took the englishmen in...fed them and showed the around town.

    of course, neither could understand the other's language. there was a word that the natives kept repeating - "wingandacoa" - that the englishmen took to be the name of the land. it was entered into all records and official documents as such.

    when it was time for the englishmen to leave, they took two natives with them. this is what raleigh had sent them there to do in the first place. the two men were named wanchese and manteo. wanchese, for his part, hated england (a true american); but manteo was, by all accounts, dazzled by it all.

    thomas harriot, a mathematical genius, sat down with manteo to learn his language and teach him english. manteo's language was so different from english, and used sounds that didn't appear in any european language (samples of algonquin), that harriot decided to create a 36-character alphabet for writing down the language in such a way as to convey the proper prounciation. after months of hard work, harriot spoke reasonable algonquian and manteo had reasonable english.

    it was about that time that harriot learned that "wingandacoa" actually meant "you have nice clothes."

    i can think of now more fitting a name for our country than that.

    either that or the united states of dave's ass

    unless someone else has a better suggestion

By Wanchese on Saturday, September 15, 2001 - 08:27 pm:

    speaking of names, what does weroanza mean?

By Weroanza on Saturday, September 15, 2001 - 09:01 pm:

    it means "supreme leader."

    but y'all can just call me Dubya.

By JboxR on Sunday, September 16, 2001 - 02:36 am:

    (singing) "...And I'm proud to be a Wingandacoaian - where at least I know I'm free..."

    Hmmmm.. doesn't have the same ring to it.

By S on Wednesday, October 3, 2001 - 02:20 pm:

    Weroanza,
    you are an idiot.

By semillama on Wednesday, October 3, 2001 - 03:33 pm:

    I don't know, "America" while having a nice ring to it, is also the name of both continents in this hemisphere. So everyone's an American. Kind of pretentions to just try to restrict the term to people from this country, don't you think?

    It would be more ftting to have a name for the country that is native to it, no?

    I like Weroanza's idea.

By Ophelia on Thursday, October 4, 2001 - 03:50 pm:

    i liked the united states of dave's ass idea.

    S, takes one to know one