this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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This is a conceptual alternate history map of modern day North America without colonisation. It's still reasonably inaccurate of course but it's not meant to accurately portray the borders of a pre-colonised North America.
Sioux is a name given by the colonizers. It's not just the borders.
iirc its a word for enemy, IE the colonists encountered a rival tribe, and never cared to correct their mistake.
The Wikipedia says it comes from a French misspelling of an indigenous word that could be used to describe the people. So it might be a little less offensive than that, but still not great.
In English we use Norse meaning northern people, unsurprisingly it is the word originally used to describe them by people south of them. Those people now called Germans get their name from ceaser when he invaded from Italy, named by the Greeks, who in turn derive their modern name from the Romans because they called themselves Hellanes... Spain gets it's name probably because it was located near a rabbit on a Roman coin... They also named Britain of course and all of them would be the ones going to the new world and naming things there
It's weird but it's pretty common