Atlas Altera

MERIDEA

TYPES OF EXONYMS

NORTH CRUCEA

Of the entire landmass of Gemina, Meridea was the most accessible region to sailors coming from Ecumina in terms of not only distance but also winds and ocean currents. Muslim traders from southern Libya arrived in the Venezuelan Coast some two centuries before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese, bringing Islam, iron-working technology, and disease to the region. Disease, and to a lesser degree, slave-raiding, decimated the region for centuries. In the more inaccessible Xingu Rainforest, intervention finally came in the form of the largest League of Nations Reserve in the world to be created, though it is still where uncontacted peoples and rare species exist alongside bootleggers, poachers, land squatters, guerrilla fighters, and illegal loggers.

Meridea is also place of contrasting political societies. Brazil became the new home to one of Europea's last surviving monarchies, whereas the north of the region has long been fertile ground for socialism.

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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.

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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