Sure, but why not write simply "it is the only ocean to completely embrace a continent rather than being embraced by them", and leave out the first qualification?
It's always possible to add more qualifications, like "it is the only penguin-containing ocean completely south of the Equator to touch three others and to completely embrace a continent rather than being embraced by them.
Could somebody who understands this stuff explain it for me?
I'm pretty sure I've heard of the Southern Ocean before. It also seems a little fishy that this is being heavily promoted by the magazine that (presumably) these 'Nat Geo cartographers' work for.
Is this a PR stunt? Is there an official body that classifies oceans?
Edit:
I guess this bit of the article explains it. There is no new ocean, it's been recognised for a while.
"'The Southern Ocean has long been recognized by scientists, but because there was never agreement internationally, we never officially recognized it,' says National Geographic Society Geographer Alex Tait. "
> Is this a PR stunt? Is there an official body that classifies oceans?
The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) is the official body which defines the world's oceans. It is an intergovernmental international organization whose members are 94 countries, including all the world's major seagoing powers.
IHO hasn't officially recognised the existence of the Southern Ocean yet, but it is planning to. Part of the hold-up is a dispute with Australia over the boundaries of the Southern Ocean – the IHO wants to put its northern boundary at the 60th parallel south, the Australian government wants to put its northern boundary as the southern Australian coast (which reflects Australian cultural understandings of it.) The other part of the hold-up, is the process of updating the boundaries of the world's oceans is being delayed by some unrelated political issues, such as the "Sea of Japan" naming dispute between Japan and Korea.
But, unlike recognised international bodies such as the IHO, or even national government bodies, National Geographic magazine, or the National Geographic Society, has no formal authority to decide the boundaries of anything, including the world's oceans. So yeah, this is pretty much just PR.
From their website (https://iho.int/): "IHO works to ensure that all the world's seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted, thereby supporting safety of navigation and the protection of the marine environment. It coordinates the activities of national hydrographic offices and sets standards in order to promote uniformity in nautical charts and documents. It issues survey best practices and provides guidelines to maximize the use of hydrographic information."
Lest you think this merely a paper-shuffling exercise, if there's a shipping accident, a huge amount of legal liability rides on the accuracy and up-to-date information in the charts. What these guys do underpins a huge amount of maritime law and international shipping. Definitely one of the really important, useful international orgs.
A friend has led an ISO standardized list that you are likely to have used.
One out of every ten academics in the field is going to going to disagree with a given naming scheme. Some percentage of these are going to become obsessed with how you've gotten it wrong. They'll publish literal, old school, paper books with ISBN numbers accusing you and your organization of systematic murder of indigenous peoples, then constantly make edits to Wikipedia with their book as proof. It will take a decade or more to get it off Wikipedia because a "fact" with ISBN number trumps everything.
You'll wake up mornings to all caps, incoherent emails from people who sound like mental asylum inmates, but claim to be professor-doctors at distant universities. They hate you. You have ruined science.
You'll have deranged stalkers who unleash hatred on everything you ever write online from this time forward. As you type a blog post or a tweet, you'll hear their screaming voices in your head, commenting on every sentence you write.
Inside your international recognized naming group will be all the pettiness of the triviality of academic politics.
Outside, politicians and national interests will demand that your list be used as a weapon against their enemies. The offices of heads of state will call your boss if there are even rumors of you making a wrong call.
In the end, only a few strong will remain in charge, able to navigate the internal and external foes, able to read the coming storms by the falling of the leaves, and with a superhuman knowledge of the possible reactions the academics and the external powers who matter. If the world is lucky, a few good changes will slip into the list from time to time, provided they don't anger the wrong people. Inconvenient opinions will be silently stonewalled until such a time as world power shifts. The relentless killing knife of evolution will toss away anyone who does not play the game by its rules.
This list you are making isn't about truth. It's about power.
>the Australian government wants to put its northern boundary as the southern Australian coast (which reflects Australian cultural understandings of it.)
That's probably why as 57 year old Aussie, I'm wondering why this idea of the Southern Ocean is new. When I first went on a road trip 10 years ago on the Great Ocean Road, what I saw couldn't have been anything other than the Southern Ocean. The Pacific coast was a 1000km away to the east towards Sydney, and the Indian Ocean was what you saw when the sunset over Perth to the Far West.
Yeah as a fellow Kiwi (living in Australia) I've always considered the Southern Ocean to start somewhere around the subantarctic islands (Auckland Island, Campbell Island, and Macquarie Island) below NZ.
From Waipapa Point[1] on Te Waipounamu, if you were looking west or south-west towards Rakiura, you'd be looking at the "Tasman Sea". Otherwise the waters are the "South Pacific Ocean". See sections 61 and 63 of [1] for more detail.
If you're on the Great Ocean Road west of Cape Otway and can see the water, the water is internationally recognised as "Great Australian Bight". If you're on the Great Ocean Road to the east of Cape Otway, the water you see is internationally recognised as "Bass Strait". See sections 62, 62A and 63 of [1] for the detailed definitions of limits.
The latest IHO standard S-23 is edition 3 from 1953 [1] and identifies the waters around Antarctica as either the South Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean or South Atlantic Ocean. Boundaries between the three oceans in the vicinity of Antarctica are approximately [2] the lines south of Cape Agulhas (southern point of the African continent), South East Cape (southern point of Tasmania, Australia) and Cape Horn (southern point of the South American continent).
In addition to the political disputes of more modern times about names and geographic limits, there have historically been problems with determining the real geographic location referred to in historical maps, and problems with naming of points in maps. The first point of the Australian mainland which the Captain James Cook expedition attempted to name as "Point Hicks" was found by later navigators to be over 20km offshore from the mainland in the middle of the ocean[3]. The government in 1970 in celebration of the bicentenary of the Captain James Cook expedition to Australia decided to rename "Cape Everard" to "Point Hicks".
[2] The standard notes that Argentina and Chile were in dispute regarding the southwest limit of the South Atlantic Ocean and eastern limit of the South Pacific Ocean.
As an Australian, I've always understood the "Great Southern Ocean" to lie south of Australia, and never realised that it wasn't called this outside Australia. I guess that's where the Australian government's objection comes from: wanting the official definition to match up with the long standing popular definition.
A bit of searching shows that this name (in French) was recorded in Freycinet's Map of 1811.
Personally, I prefer "Great Southern Ocean" over "Southern Ocean", as it captures some of the power and majesty of a wild part of the world. Maybe that should be the compromise: Southern Ocean is below 60 degrees and Great Southern Ocean is the whole thing, right up to the Australian coastline, though it would miss the point that it is great due to its power, not its size?
Perhaps this is a conspiracy to sell more maps. Maps last too long, so occasionally renaming something where no one lives (can't change anyone's actual address) is good for the map cartels. :)
> Anyone who has been there will struggle to explain what's so mesmerizing about it, but they'll all agree that the glaciers are bluer, the air colder, the mountains more intimidating, and the landscapes more captivating than anywhere else you can go.
I was hoping to see a photo of those blue glaciers, intimidating mountains, and captivating landscapes. And there’s none. (Yes, I know how to Google images of blue glaciers.)
I hope more editors ask the question: based on article text, what photos would a reader likely want to see?
I think one still photo can't really communicate what it's like. It's main characteristics are constant strong winds and large waves, along with being very cold of course. It's a miserably unforgiving and isolated place.
There's a decent Wikipedia entry [1] on the Southern Ocean that provides a "Definitions and use" section listing how the ocean's been defined/redifined over time, and as by Australia: Pre-20th century, 1928 delineation, 1937 delineation, 1953 delineation, 2002 draft delineation, Australian standpoint.
From my recollection, this would've been at either infant or primary school, so before I had discrete subject classes. But I don't recall there being any scientific underpinning, it was just one of those lists of things we learned, like the planets and the continents.
Me, too, US born 1977. I learned about it when I was very young, and for some reason the fact that there were "five oceans" really stuck in my head. I have no idea what source I got it from, whether from school or some ancient children's science book from decades before I was born (definitely a possibility.) When I was older I would get stuck trying to name all five oceans before I remembered that there were only four now. It never sounded right to me that there were four, so this finally restores balance to my brain.
I was thaught of 5 oceans: Indian, Atlantic, Pacific, Artic and Antarctic... So not sure what is new here. Is this similar to how in Latin world America is counted as a single continent while it's counted as 2 continents in the Anglo world?
Well, the article is about National Geographic labelling the waters south of 60 degrees South as the Southern Ocean. There isn't an international consensus about whether to count the Southern Ocean as an ocean, and if so, where its boundary should be: in particular, Australia has always considered itself to be surrounded by the Indian Ocean to its west, the Southern Ocean to its south, the Pacific Ocean to the east and the seas that divide the continent from maritime southeast Asia to the north. Since this description is so natural from an Australian perspective, Australia has usually pushed back on adopting a Southern Ocean with some other definition.
So yes, probably, this is very much like the difference between North and South America vs a unitary American continent. These distinctions seem academic to some but they're about identity and the placement of a community in the world to others.
But I think that in Australia, it's usually shown touching the whole extent of the mainland's southern coast? By NG definition, that would be incorrect as the "edges" of the ocean at defined as being at 60 degrees South, far away from Australia.
60 degrees might make sense from a South American perspective, but for them anything much further North could put it next to much of Argentina and Chile.
I think a boundary based on continental features makes more sense. So a boundary on great circles from, roughly, Windy Harbour Australia, to Cape Town, to Isla Hermite, then back to Tasmania.
Growing up in Warrnambool we were taught that the only thing separating us from Antarctica was the Southern Ocean. Bass Strait and the Tasman Sea began a bit further east and the Great Australian Bight wrapped the coast from WA to SA: The Southern Ocean was considered to be all the water beyond that to the south with the Indian Ocean west of the WA coast. It was never thought to be touching the Tasmanian coast ~4000km further east.
My child came home from kindergarten this year and told me that there were five oceans. I only knew four. I quickly pulled up Wikipedia and confirmed that the Southern Ocean was a thing.
That was the first case of something my child learning contradicting my own outdated education. I'm sure there will be plenty more to come.
I wouldn't call it outdated. With imprecise things like oceans and continents people are always going to disagree, like how US Americans and South Americans disagree about the number of continents in America.
This is a thing? I didn’t realize people tried to loop North America and South America together into a single continent. What’s the driving force behind that?
"Continent" has no consistent definition and is largely a cultural construct. Ergo different cultures will have different things that they consider "continents".
I've only heard this from Argentinians. They think that because we refer to our country as "America", that we are disputing the existence of, or are unaware of, or are somehow slighting, South America. They want us to refer to ourselves as USAers so that we are more accurate. I don't think that one is going to stick in the USA anytime soon.
To be fair, they have a point. Besides, It's not so much America thats the issue but "Americans".
Then again I don't blame the US for calling itself a continent since United states really isn't a name. Like South Africa isn't a name. Very nebulous now that I think about it. On the other hand, the UK has too many names.
No, they don't have a point. The names are what they are. "Americans" are citizens of the United States of America. Insisting that's not correct is just petty whining, not a valid point.
It's not valid to want to acknowledge the fact that not all of your continent is part of the USA?
The United States of America is an embodiment of "manifest destiny", which is a declaration of intent to conquer the sovereign people of the continent.
It's just etymology at this point -- a lot of words have a history or literal meaning that wouldn't make them a good choice if we were starting from scratch today.
If you come up with an actually pronounceable name (so not USAer or USAian), we'll consider it before dropping your suggestion in the paper shredder.
It's quite presumptuous to demand the people of another country refer to themselves in a particular way. You are free to call us whatever you want amongst yourselves. We do it with Germany/Deutschland and they don't seem to mind that much. But we're not demanding that they refer to themselves by our name for them.
>It's quite presumptuous to demand the people of another country refer to themselves in a particular way.
Not just Americans. In Portuguese, Americans (that is, those from and of the USA) are often called americanos. In French, américain is much more commonly used than États-Unien.
The Spanish meaning of americano that does not include Americans in this way is very unusual among major Western languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_%28word%29#Other_lang.... I don't mean to say that the equivalent of "American" in those languages is the only way to refer to those of the USA, or that equivalents to "USA" and such don't exist. In Portuguese, Italian, and German, however, saying Americano/Americano/Amerikanisch would generally be understood as referring to that of the USA without additional context, as opposed to a Brazilian or Argentinean, in a way that Americano wouldn't in Spanish.
Not only not really a name, but also used by other countries in the area, like the United Mexican States (full name to this day) of the Republic of the United States of Brazil (full name in the First Republic era, 1880s to 1930)
While Mexico is the only such country today other than the USA, it alone is good enough reason for people to avoid using "United Statesians" or the local equivalent thereof to refer to those of the USA. (Even worse is "norteamericanos". Why aren't Canadians and Bahamians constantly marching in the streets to protest against Spanish speakers' use of such a term to refer solely to denizens of the USA?)
The US, on the other hand, is the only country with the word "America" in its name. All the more reason for the use, in every major Western language other than Spanish, of America/American to refer to the US and its inhabitants.
>To be fair, they have a point. Besides, It's not so much America thats the issue but "Americans".
In Spanish, yes. In Portuguese, Americans (that is, those from and of the USA) are often called americanos. In French, américain is much more commonly used than États-Unien.
The Spanish meaning of americano that does not include Americans in this way is very unusual among major Western languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_%28word%29#Other_lang.... I don't mean to say that the equivalent of "American" in those languages is the only way to refer to those of the USA, or that equivalents to "USA" and such don't exist. In Portuguese, Italian, and German, however, saying Americano/Americano/Amerikanisch would generally be understood as referring to that of the USA without additional context, as opposed to a Brazilian or Argentinean, in a way that Americano wouldn't in Spanish.
From the outside that can seem the case (understandably). In reality it only has one (UK), and the other terms have different meanings:
- England, Wales, and Scotland are the 'mainland' countries individually
- Great Britain (Britain) is the name for the larger island group that contains those countries
- UK (the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) is what you get when you add in Northern Ireland
- British Isles is the/a name for both major island groups combined (so that includes the Republic of Ireland)
Not all of these terms are liked by all parties to them (especially British Isles), but they do each have a distinct geographical meaning which often confuses even the locals.
My 7-year-old came home recently with several maps with a continent on them marked, variously, either as "Australia" or "Oceania". My wife and I were both confused since we had been taught that this was called "Australasia". Apparently people don't call it that nowadays!
I don't think I've thought of the name Oceania outside of references to 1984 (the book). I knew the word didn't originate from there but it's all I think of when I hear the term used.
A lot of these divisions and names are country or culture-specific.
Asian countries call those one way, European another, the US a different, some countries prefer their own, etc.
As the Wikipedia entry below says e.g.:
"Australasia is a region which comprises Australia, New Zealand, and some neighbouring islands. The term is used in a number of different contexts including geopolitically, physiogeographically, and ecologically where the term covers several slightly different but related regions."
This include continents, which, depending on the context, country, etc can be seen as being anywhere from 4 to 7.
I was in school in the 70s - 80s. The first time having kids come home from school and needing help with their math homework was a real shocker. Back when I was in school, you "carried" and "borrowed" when doing addiging and subtraction. Now they "regroup", and some other terminology I can't remember.
When I was a kid in the 90s we were taught that the tongue had specific zones that tasted specific tastes. There was a diagram and everything. I think it was long debunked even then.
I have a dictionary with the tongue map printed in it. It's also in a Magic School Bus book.
It's a good case study in society's ability to believe things despite the fact that every single individual in the society has direct personal experience falsifying the belief. If you've ever eaten candy, you've experienced the taste of sugar all across your tongue.
It takes only a couple of seconds to run an experiment that conclusively disproves the tongue map. But there it is in the reference books.
(Related: one of Phil Plait's pet peeves is apparently the large number of people who tell him that you can't see the moon during the day. Again, all it takes to falsify this belief is occasionally looking up.)
That was the first case of something my child learning contradicting my own outdated education.
The funny thing is that it is not like this is some new discovery or new knowledge -- Webster's 1913 dictionary has five oceans: "Ocean: 2. One of the large bodies of water into which the great ocean is regarded as divided, as the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Antarctic oceans." https://www.websters1913.com/words/Ocean So you get to feel like you have a more up-to-date education than your grand parents, your kids feel like they have a more up-to-date education than you, and it all is just a cycle of fashion :-P
I wouldn't go to Webster's for definitive information about hydrography. The definitive source is "Limits of Oceans and Seas" by the International Hydrology Organization.
But much like the twelve Olympians or the seven wonders of the world, there have always been more individual seas than the collective count would imply.
In real terms, drawing a line through the middle of the ocean and calling the ocean by different names according to what side of the line it's on is pretty ridiculous. You want to name regions that are different in some important way from other regions.
As a side note, I really hate how NatGeo's website forces me to enter an email address to read the article. So naturally, I put a fake email in and continued. I really wish there was a way to kill the newsletter modal - it's the return of popup windows but more annoying.
90 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadDoesn't the Indian Ocean also touch three others? The map shows it touches the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern, and it doesn't touch the Arctic.
The Atlantic and Pacific both touch four other oceans.
It's always possible to add more qualifications, like "it is the only penguin-containing ocean completely south of the Equator to touch three others and to completely embrace a continent rather than being embraced by them.
I'm pretty sure I've heard of the Southern Ocean before. It also seems a little fishy that this is being heavily promoted by the magazine that (presumably) these 'Nat Geo cartographers' work for.
Is this a PR stunt? Is there an official body that classifies oceans?
Edit:
I guess this bit of the article explains it. There is no new ocean, it's been recognised for a while.
"'The Southern Ocean has long been recognized by scientists, but because there was never agreement internationally, we never officially recognized it,' says National Geographic Society Geographer Alex Tait. "
The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) is the official body which defines the world's oceans. It is an intergovernmental international organization whose members are 94 countries, including all the world's major seagoing powers.
IHO hasn't officially recognised the existence of the Southern Ocean yet, but it is planning to. Part of the hold-up is a dispute with Australia over the boundaries of the Southern Ocean – the IHO wants to put its northern boundary at the 60th parallel south, the Australian government wants to put its northern boundary as the southern Australian coast (which reflects Australian cultural understandings of it.) The other part of the hold-up, is the process of updating the boundaries of the world's oceans is being delayed by some unrelated political issues, such as the "Sea of Japan" naming dispute between Japan and Korea.
But, unlike recognised international bodies such as the IHO, or even national government bodies, National Geographic magazine, or the National Geographic Society, has no formal authority to decide the boundaries of anything, including the world's oceans. So yeah, this is pretty much just PR.
I'm imagining they have a yearly conference and they have an agenda like
* check if there are new oceans
* check if older oceans have gone away
* should we rename the oceans?
* snacks
Lest you think this merely a paper-shuffling exercise, if there's a shipping accident, a huge amount of legal liability rides on the accuracy and up-to-date information in the charts. What these guys do underpins a huge amount of maritime law and international shipping. Definitely one of the really important, useful international orgs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_naming_dispute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Philippine_Sea
...and that's before even getting into maritime boundary/exclusive economic zone disputes.
One out of every ten academics in the field is going to going to disagree with a given naming scheme. Some percentage of these are going to become obsessed with how you've gotten it wrong. They'll publish literal, old school, paper books with ISBN numbers accusing you and your organization of systematic murder of indigenous peoples, then constantly make edits to Wikipedia with their book as proof. It will take a decade or more to get it off Wikipedia because a "fact" with ISBN number trumps everything.
You'll wake up mornings to all caps, incoherent emails from people who sound like mental asylum inmates, but claim to be professor-doctors at distant universities. They hate you. You have ruined science.
You'll have deranged stalkers who unleash hatred on everything you ever write online from this time forward. As you type a blog post or a tweet, you'll hear their screaming voices in your head, commenting on every sentence you write.
Inside your international recognized naming group will be all the pettiness of the triviality of academic politics.
Outside, politicians and national interests will demand that your list be used as a weapon against their enemies. The offices of heads of state will call your boss if there are even rumors of you making a wrong call.
In the end, only a few strong will remain in charge, able to navigate the internal and external foes, able to read the coming storms by the falling of the leaves, and with a superhuman knowledge of the possible reactions the academics and the external powers who matter. If the world is lucky, a few good changes will slip into the list from time to time, provided they don't anger the wrong people. Inconvenient opinions will be silently stonewalled until such a time as world power shifts. The relentless killing knife of evolution will toss away anyone who does not play the game by its rules.
This list you are making isn't about truth. It's about power.
That's probably why as 57 year old Aussie, I'm wondering why this idea of the Southern Ocean is new. When I first went on a road trip 10 years ago on the Great Ocean Road, what I saw couldn't have been anything other than the Southern Ocean. The Pacific coast was a 1000km away to the east towards Sydney, and the Indian Ocean was what you saw when the sunset over Perth to the Far West.
Although I've never stared south from the Great Australian Bight.
[1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1074610331
[2] https://iho.int/uploads/user/pubs/standards/s-23/S-23_Ed3_19...
*Currently living on the Pacific coast - or is it the Coral Sea?
[1] https://iho.int/uploads/user/pubs/standards/s-23/S-23_Ed3_19...
The latest IHO standard S-23 is edition 3 from 1953 [1] and identifies the waters around Antarctica as either the South Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean or South Atlantic Ocean. Boundaries between the three oceans in the vicinity of Antarctica are approximately [2] the lines south of Cape Agulhas (southern point of the African continent), South East Cape (southern point of Tasmania, Australia) and Cape Horn (southern point of the South American continent).
In addition to the political disputes of more modern times about names and geographic limits, there have historically been problems with determining the real geographic location referred to in historical maps, and problems with naming of points in maps. The first point of the Australian mainland which the Captain James Cook expedition attempted to name as "Point Hicks" was found by later navigators to be over 20km offshore from the mainland in the middle of the ocean[3]. The government in 1970 in celebration of the bicentenary of the Captain James Cook expedition to Australia decided to rename "Cape Everard" to "Point Hicks".
[1] https://iho.int/uploads/user/pubs/standards/s-23/S-23_Ed3_19...
[2] The standard notes that Argentina and Chile were in dispute regarding the southwest limit of the South Atlantic Ocean and eastern limit of the South Pacific Ocean.
[3] https://www.anps.org.au/upload/Sept_2013.pdf
A bit of searching shows that this name (in French) was recorded in Freycinet's Map of 1811.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freycinet_Map_of_1811
Personally, I prefer "Great Southern Ocean" over "Southern Ocean", as it captures some of the power and majesty of a wild part of the world. Maybe that should be the compromise: Southern Ocean is below 60 degrees and Great Southern Ocean is the whole thing, right up to the Australian coastline, though it would miss the point that it is great due to its power, not its size?
I was hoping to see a photo of those blue glaciers, intimidating mountains, and captivating landscapes. And there’s none. (Yes, I know how to Google images of blue glaciers.)
I hope more editors ask the question: based on article text, what photos would a reader likely want to see?
I often have this same thought. "Where's the pictures."
Especially maddening when the headline implies (to me) that there will be pictures that I'll want to see.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ocean
So yes, probably, this is very much like the difference between North and South America vs a unitary American continent. These distinctions seem academic to some but they're about identity and the placement of a community in the world to others.
I thought in Latin America they say there are 3 Americas: north, central, and south.
I think a boundary based on continental features makes more sense. So a boundary on great circles from, roughly, Windy Harbour Australia, to Cape Town, to Isla Hermite, then back to Tasmania.
That was the first case of something my child learning contradicting my own outdated education. I'm sure there will be plenty more to come.
Continent is a poorly defined term.
Then again I don't blame the US for calling itself a continent since United states really isn't a name. Like South Africa isn't a name. Very nebulous now that I think about it. On the other hand, the UK has too many names.
The United States of America is an embodiment of "manifest destiny", which is a declaration of intent to conquer the sovereign people of the continent.
It’s clearly not a grape!!!
It's quite presumptuous to demand the people of another country refer to themselves in a particular way. You are free to call us whatever you want amongst yourselves. We do it with Germany/Deutschland and they don't seem to mind that much. But we're not demanding that they refer to themselves by our name for them.
Not just Americans. In Portuguese, Americans (that is, those from and of the USA) are often called americanos. In French, américain is much more commonly used than États-Unien.
The Spanish meaning of americano that does not include Americans in this way is very unusual among major Western languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_%28word%29#Other_lang.... I don't mean to say that the equivalent of "American" in those languages is the only way to refer to those of the USA, or that equivalents to "USA" and such don't exist. In Portuguese, Italian, and German, however, saying Americano/Americano/Amerikanisch would generally be understood as referring to that of the USA without additional context, as opposed to a Brazilian or Argentinean, in a way that Americano wouldn't in Spanish.
While Mexico is the only such country today other than the USA, it alone is good enough reason for people to avoid using "United Statesians" or the local equivalent thereof to refer to those of the USA. (Even worse is "norteamericanos". Why aren't Canadians and Bahamians constantly marching in the streets to protest against Spanish speakers' use of such a term to refer solely to denizens of the USA?)
The US, on the other hand, is the only country with the word "America" in its name. All the more reason for the use, in every major Western language other than Spanish, of America/American to refer to the US and its inhabitants.
In Spanish, yes. In Portuguese, Americans (that is, those from and of the USA) are often called americanos. In French, américain is much more commonly used than États-Unien.
The Spanish meaning of americano that does not include Americans in this way is very unusual among major Western languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_%28word%29#Other_lang.... I don't mean to say that the equivalent of "American" in those languages is the only way to refer to those of the USA, or that equivalents to "USA" and such don't exist. In Portuguese, Italian, and German, however, saying Americano/Americano/Amerikanisch would generally be understood as referring to that of the USA without additional context, as opposed to a Brazilian or Argentinean, in a way that Americano wouldn't in Spanish.
From the outside that can seem the case (understandably). In reality it only has one (UK), and the other terms have different meanings:
- England, Wales, and Scotland are the 'mainland' countries individually
- Great Britain (Britain) is the name for the larger island group that contains those countries
- UK (the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) is what you get when you add in Northern Ireland
- British Isles is the/a name for both major island groups combined (so that includes the Republic of Ireland)
Not all of these terms are liked by all parties to them (especially British Isles), but they do each have a distinct geographical meaning which often confuses even the locals.
Give me a break, I'll determine the name for my own culture and how I identify myself, thanks
Asian countries call those one way, European another, the US a different, some countries prefer their own, etc.
As the Wikipedia entry below says e.g.:
"Australasia is a region which comprises Australia, New Zealand, and some neighbouring islands. The term is used in a number of different contexts including geopolitically, physiogeographically, and ecologically where the term covers several slightly different but related regions."
This include continents, which, depending on the context, country, etc can be seen as being anywhere from 4 to 7.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Separation
FWIW, I don't hate or love the new way, it's just pretty radically different from what I was taught.
It's a good case study in society's ability to believe things despite the fact that every single individual in the society has direct personal experience falsifying the belief. If you've ever eaten candy, you've experienced the taste of sugar all across your tongue.
It takes only a couple of seconds to run an experiment that conclusively disproves the tongue map. But there it is in the reference books.
> all taste sensations come from all regions of the tongue, although different parts are more sensitive to certain tastes
The funny thing is that it is not like this is some new discovery or new knowledge -- Webster's 1913 dictionary has five oceans: "Ocean: 2. One of the large bodies of water into which the great ocean is regarded as divided, as the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Antarctic oceans." https://www.websters1913.com/words/Ocean So you get to feel like you have a more up-to-date education than your grand parents, your kids feel like they have a more up-to-date education than you, and it all is just a cycle of fashion :-P
The 3rd edition of that document, which came out in 1953, lists four oceans - same as Webster's sans the Antarctic: https://iho.int/uploads/user/pubs/standards/s-23/S-23_Ed3_19...
The 4th edition of the document, which has been in draft since 1986, adds the Southern Ocean: https://legacy.iho.int/mtg_docs/com_wg/S-23WG/S-23WG_Misc/Dr...
But much like the twelve Olympians or the seven wonders of the world, there have always been more individual seas than the collective count would imply.
In real terms, drawing a line through the middle of the ocean and calling the ocean by different names according to what side of the line it's on is pretty ridiculous. You want to name regions that are different in some important way from other regions.
Another Aussie here letting you all know we've been calling in the southern ocean since before I can remember :)