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Comment by oncethishappens | Hacker News Reader

The name change serves zero purpose and is nothing more than political theater.

It happens because political theater works on enough people to swing elections.

It was political theater when the Obama administration renamed Mount McKinley to Denali, but obviously they felt that it served a purpose.

I'm not so sure.

The McKinley name for the mountain was by a prospector, ginning up support for a presidential candidate. A bunch of people showed up, started digging for gold, and just ignored the local names for things.

Denali is historically relevant, and locally relevant. It seems like a reduction in politics, not a continuation.

Denali is just the word for 'tall' in some local dialect. It is not exactly pregnant with meaning.

> It seems like a reduction in politics, not a continuation.

That's an odd take given that there was far less political discussion around the mountain's name prior to its renaming under Obama.

I think you lack empathy for others, and it's leading you to discount things that matter to people.

Empathy is telling 300,000,000 people to call the mountain "Denali" just because it matters to some 2,000 extant members of a tribe? Are you sure that's empathy? Because to me it seems empty and performative. I could be wrong though. Do you suggest that we use native terms for every landmark that matters to the erstwhile locals, given that their feelings about place names mean so much? Now that I think about it, of course you do. You'd have to be some kind of psychopath to go around guilt tripping strangers about the name of one measly mountain without actually giving a damn about the principles involved.

Wow. Yes, I hope you inspect your relationships with people.

> Denali is just the word for 'tall' in some local dialect. It is not exactly pregnant with meaning.

Look up the etymology of Mont Blanc or the Himalayas -- not especially pregnant with meaning either. The point is that using the local name, if it existed, was a pretty well established principle in cartography, made more conspicuous when overlooked, as with Mt. Everest. And Denali.

The 'Grand Teton' mountain in Wyoming is just a French phrase meaning 'big boob'.[1] And 'McKinley' was just some politician who had never even laid eyes on his namesake lump of rock.

[1] https://www.davehansenwhitewater.com/how-the-tetons-got-thei...

"Mont Blanc"? The descendants of the celtic peoples who originally populated the area would take issue with that moniker. They didn't have a true written language back in the daye, but they did have a rune-like symbol for that mountain that looks just like unicode character U+1F4A9. Hopefully in time we will all refer to the mountain in a more respectful way.

The mountain has a long history of name changes and many of the changes have been political. Denali is a name that seems to have some significant local support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denali#Naming

There it is, just like clockwork, the whataboutism appears.

Seriously though, let the locals be in charge of naming things. As a Texan, I've always just called it the Gulf. But if asked, it's full name is Gulf of Mexico, named after the Mexica (the Aztecs to you and me).

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