Hacker News Reader

Comment by vhvjkyhkogvv | Hacker News Reader

> the amazon

I think of tall female warriors

If tall female legendary Greek warriors show up and make a claim to the .amazon TLD, we should consider their claim. So far they haven't.

The river was named due to a European associating it with the mythical warriors.

Go on?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Orellana

"The name 'Amazon' is said to arise from a battle Francisco de Orellana fought with a tribe of Tapuyas. The women of the tribe fought alongside the men, as was the custom among the tribe. Orellana derived the name Amazonas from the mythical Amazons of Asia described by Herodotus (see The Histories [4.110-116]) and Diodorus in Greek legends"

I was (vaguely) aware of that but what difference does it make here?

The point is that the word "amazon" (which is what is being bought as a gTLD) was not first used in South America, so they have no claim to it beyond "we use it too". Which isn't a good claim, otherwise they should've/would've been able to prevent Jeff Bezos from calling the company Amazon in the first place.

No, they used it first and Bezos named his company after the river. He could have chosen another name instead of using one that was already taken. He's the one that caused a name collision so he's the one that should suffer from it.

Who is "they"? It seems like it was used first by a conquistador. Who wasn't Greek.

That's "The amazons", in plural.

In English, "the Amazon" could also be a valid phrase apart from the river. For instance, you might have a course called "The Amazon in Ancient Greek and Modern Culture".

No, it would still be "The Amazons from Ancient Greece" or "The Greek Amazons" or something. "Amazon" singular in that context is only used as an adjective, such as "the Amazon Queen".

Quick edit: Ah wait, I think I see what you're doing with that phrase. It's shorthand for "The Amazon culture" or "Amazon depictions" or something, but it still comes off as strange-sounding to me.

Using "the X" to generalize about a group of people is likely to trigger offense if you're talking about a group of people who exist or is identified with today. It's not just the essence of stereotyping, but also kind of affected and pompous.

So, sure, it sounds "strange", but it's not new, and people use it when they want to make a generalization with a tone of authority. Probably one might expect to get away with it when talking about an abstract concept or archetype that exists independently of actual people.

Well it could refer to a specific one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com