I realized all of this as I was playing my geography learning game on www.freerice.com. I was cruising along getting all the answers right until I hit one of the -stans. Kyrgyzstan.... Where in the world was that? I mean I know the general vicinity, but I had no idea which -stan country was which, except for Pakistan (which my neighbors growing up were from and for some reason I made a point from a young age to know where that was) and Afghanistan (because we went to war with them). So Uzbek, Turk, Tajik, Kyrgy, and Kazakh... yea you mean nothing to me and I group you as one entity in my mind.
But hold on, the United States got its name because it is made up of states..... that are united... that's kinda lame too!
America on the other hand... amazing story behind that name. Basically some Italian merchant named Amerigo Vespucci who was jealous of all of Columbus's success decided to go on his own expedition to the "New World". He wrote letters back to Europe that were eventually published. Then, two German geographers got hold of the letters, and decided the new lands should be named after the man who "had discovered this new quarter of the world", completely ignorant that Columbus had discovered the "Americas" 15 years earlier. Womp womp for Columbus. At least there is a city in Ohio named after him right?? Or not..
So anyways, from this post you should have learned:
- The origin of "-stan"
- The origin of America
- What Pakistan means
- There are 7 countries that end in -stan and no one cares about them
- I get very agitated by random things