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MALVINEA

TYPES OF EXONYMS

WEST CISANTARCTICA

The wind-swept island groups that form the Malvinea Triangle were unsettled and continue to be some of the most desolate lands on earth. Whalers from Lower Navarre and Norway were the first to frequent the treacherous waters in this region, relying on supply stations in what later became known as the Malvinea Triangle, consisting of Avalon, the Labradores, and the Kerguelens.

 

Due to the region being unattractive for conventional settlement, the islands of Avalon became a refuge for exiled Cumbrish nationalists, while whaling brought Aquitanians from Lower Navarre. The Kerguelens remain as a French outpost for scientific expeditions in the Antipodes. Most of the region, in fact, acted as the main base for explorations of Antarctica, and before the Antarctic Treaty determined the contiguous landmass of Antarctica to be a condominium shared by all nations, Cumbrish settlements extended past the Drake Sea into the Antarctic Peninsula, leaving behind the foundations for numerous modern scientific bases.

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ON TOPONYMS

Ethnocentrism has always dogged geographers. Atlas Altera is written in English for those of the Anglosphere, who have generally inherited neighbouring European traditions. Here, countries and regions are rendered as if it is the tradition most familiar and accepted in practical usage by native English-speakers in Altera. Thus, the political map of Altera is rendered with exonyms, and the atlas draws deep from situated knowledges while simultaneously attempting to push the boundaries of those knowledges.

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TYPES OF EXONYMS

The names of earth’s landmasses, continents, regions, and toponyms in Libya, Asea, and Erythrea were normalized by Venetian cartographers, who readily brought west maps of the south and east via their contact with the Grecians in Constantinople, a critical nexus point for trafficking things and knowledges across Borealea and Africa until the Age of Discovery. Toponyms of western continental Europea, generally corresponding to historically European Catholic areas, are derived from the naming conventions of the Dieppe school, which was influential until becoming eclipsed by the mapmakers of Antwerp. The Antwerp School made places of the Arctic and Norway known to the rest of Europea. Thus, the -ny, -land, and -ia suffixes generally correspond to these three schools of cartography influential to the English tradition.

The Dieppe School also began to incorporate the less systemic toponyms of the Spanish and Portuguese, which came out of early conquests in Septentrea and Crucea, most of which broke from the practice of naming places after native inhabitants but instead came from the Doctrine of Discovery. The Antwerp School fully normalized the practice of transliterating foreign toponyms through the lens of the regional hegemons in places where there was closer power parity between Europeans and natives, especially in Indea, Serica, and in the parts of Septentrea and Crucea that retained autonomy. The transliterations made in this time preserve the local pronunciations in the 18th and 19th centuries and may now be quite distant to the modern endonyms.

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