top of page

EAST GANDRASEA

TYPES OF EXONYMS

Beyond Sumatrea and the dense trade networks of the Emporic Rim is Polynesea, a collection of remote atolls and islands scattered across the vast Pacific. The region is home to maritime peoples with advanced transoceanic capabilities, and who all speak related languages of the Austronesian family. Some of the most impressive stone-working and canals in human history can be found in the cities of Rapanui and Ponapi.

 

Polynesean people discovered nearly every inch of habitable land in the Pacific, and made it as far as Platinea, perhaps centuries before the Age of Exploration began in Europea. With the transfer of the potato, kumara, oka, and cuy for taro, plantain, and chicken, the peopling of the cooler parts of Polynesea intensified so that Aotearoa, Rekohua, Rapanui, and highland Hawaii became some of the most populated areas of the region by the time of contact with Europeans. 

Polynesea_Zoom.jpg

POLYNESEA

MAP PLATES

Check back soon
Once posts are published, you’ll see them here.
avatarcompass.png

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.

Thanks for subscribing!

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.

Podcasts - Marginalia - Etymologies

Support

Access bonus materials on Patreon

bottom of page