Hacker News Reader

I am not sure if this is the elephant in the room but might this eventually lead to renaming most of the United States either to a neutral name or back to the names that Native Americans gave them? [1] Many websites also still refer to Native Americans as Indians. Louis C.K. has a bit about that one but I shall refrain from linking to it, because language. I support renaming the states.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_place_names_of_Native_...

View on HN

There is no consensus among first peoples either. Some prefer the term Indian, some prefer other terms.

I prefer something besides Indian mostly to avoid confusion between East Indian and West Indian. When East Indians were minuscule in population, it wasn’t an issue but today there are likely more East Indians than North American Indians in North America.

This has led me to calling Indigenous people, North American Indians, Central America Indians, etc.

This has been happening gradually for years and is continuing to spread. Renaming Mount McKinley back to Denali is probably the best known example.

It's a good thing. Certainly better than the governor of New York renaming a bridge after his dad (who apparently would have balked if he were still alive) and spending millions on new signage to do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com