Off the Map: Curious Histories of Place Names - Hardcover

Reseña del editor

Is it Rangoon, Burma (as the American media prefer), or Yangon, Myanmar (as their government decrees)? Is it Ivory Coast or Cote d'Ivoire? What keeps us from calling other countries by the names they use for themselves? The Hindu names for Indian isn't India and the Japanese don't call their country Japan. The tangled answers to these questions- and to dozens of other typonymic conundra- appear in this armchair adventure around the four corners of the globe (a biblical phrase that resulted in the belief that the earth was square).

Reseña del editor

How did the names of countries, cities, rivers, mountains, and entire peoples originate? Why do some names -- like the Red Sea, which is not red at all -- miss the target? The answers are in this armchair adventure that takes the reader through the history of place names, from the time of Ptolemy to the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Native names are only part of the fascinating story of Off the Map, an amusing, fact-filled book that recharts geography and human history through the eyes of intrepid seafarers, arrogant imperialists, feuding neighbors, and bumbling tourists. "Cartography is 20 percent geography and science", states author Derek Nelson. "The other 80 percent is ignorance, myth, greed, the arbitrary, impulsive, and ironic, further snarled in history and politics". With Off the Map, the four corners of the globe (a biblical phrase that resulted in the belief that the earth was square) will be re-discovered.