this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
1162 points (96.4% liked)
Curated Tumblr
3789 readers
199 users here now
For preserving the least toxic and most culturally relevant Tumblr heritage posts.
Image descriptions and plain text captions of written content are expected of all screenshots. Here are some image text extractors (I looked these up quick and will gladly take FOSS recommendations):
-web
-iOS
Please begin copied raw text posts (lacking a screenshot that makes it apparent it is from Tumblr) with:
# This has been reposted here to Lemmy as part of the "Curated Tumblr Project."
I made the icon using multiple creative commons svg resources, the banner is this.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is just because English sucks, or English speaking people suck at naming things. Let me show you how it's done:
In Dutch:
Horseshoe crabs are called "dagger crabs", and look what it's dragging behind.
Cuttlefish are called "ink fish", and tadaa.
Jellyfish are "kwallen", which means roughly "annoying person", and they're pretty annoying.
Bald eagles are "American Eagles", you're welcome.
A sand dollar is called a "sea coin", because of where it lives and what it resembles, which is way more accurate.
And a fly is still a fly.
In Dutch, the Common Drone Fly is also called "Blinde Bij", which means "Blind Bee". This is because this animal is neither blind nor a bee and the Dutch are very good at naming things
I read Blinde Bij as Blind Bitch lmao
Animals who do not live up to thier names Dutch edition.
Dagger Crabs - Don't have daggers and not crabs.
Ink Fish - Not actually fish.
Kwallen- Not actually a person.
American Eagles - Found all over Canada and upper Mexico.
Sea Coins - Can't actually be used as coins.
Canada and Mexico are still America so I‘d say it does live up to its name
Nobody refers to Canada or Mexico as America. North America is not America and American is exclusively used to refer to the US.
Well apparently not exclusively so, at least outside of the US, because the American Eagle is not just US-American.
Not exclusively, no. It usually means the US, but it's far from exclusive. Especially when it comes to species names, the assumption is absurd.
Incorrect
There's also a European Eagle.
Found the US person.
No. Canadian.
Funny how Canadians don't want to be called "American", Mexicans don't want to be called "American", but everyone from outside the area INSISTS that it's an appropriate name for them. Even the commenter above called you a "US person", the only other time I've seen that was in legislation about immigration, never as a demonym.
Canada and Mexico are still part of the Americas.
American doesn't refer to North America in naming animals or its people. No one from Canada or Mexico call themselves American.