I'm kind of cool with Gulf of America as a name
Summary
A stranger surprises Kareem by agreeing that "Gulf of America" works as a name. What follows is a spirited riff on geographic naming rights, colonial history, and why renaming things is actually pretty normal. The rider points out that the Mayans called it "Naha," meaning "great water," and that plenty of countries go by different names depending on who's talking. Germany is Deutschland. Japan is Nippon. And Iraq? "They renamed my dad's country an Apple product, bro." He admits there are "fascist undertones" to the recent rename depending on who changed it and why, but stripped of that context, he finds the whole thing electric. Kareem had prepared a whole argument assuming disagreement. He never got to use it.
Full Transcript
So, what's your take? I'm kind of cool with Gulf of America as a name.
100% agree.
I didn't see that coming.
I don't know what you want me to say.
I mentally prepared everything I was about to say next about you not agreeing with me. 100% disagree.
No, no, no. Stick to what you did. No, no. Stick to your golf. Well, I've never really thought about it.
I get charged up when I think about it. Like just like Gulf of America, man. It gets me going. Look, you look at a map. It kind of looks like America's golf a little bit. Okay. I grew up on the golf, right?
Which golf? Mexico. America on the Gulf of America you got Cuba in the front. So if anything it's kind of Cuba's backyard, right? So if you really... it should be like Cuba's pool if anything, right? Europeans named it Gulf of Mexico.
Facts.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Mayans called it Naha, right? Which is great water. So if you're really going to play that game, you got to go like OG and go back to... you got to go all the way back, which sounds an awful lot like Naha.
And also countries rename all the time.
Yeah. Germany, they call it Deutschland, right? Japan, they call it Nippon. They renamed my dad's country an Apple product, bro. While they were carpet bombing that Iraq...
They Steve Jobs my dad's whole... it was called Iraq.
Yeah, Iraq, which is as they say, as Iraq. That's the craziest part.
I know, but Iraq does sound better.
It sounds hard as hell.
I know. Iraq.
Then you get like Siyera out of it, which is also guess. I'm just saying renaming is cool.
Do you think people are going to get mad at you for saying that you kind of like the name? Well, there's like fascist undertones to to when who changed the name and when they changed it and why they changed it. But if you just push that to the side for a little bit, you know, I think it's electric. I don't care.