6 ms·

Actually, it's a globally known tourism business named after a globally known location and race in Greek mythology so really, Greece should get it.

8ytecoder 8y ago
Brands are always in a flux. Amazon the river and the forests and the people have a stronger brand now than the mythical Gods. But Amazon the company has not overtaken all the above.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > But Amazon the company has not overtaken all the above. That might be true, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion. I think it's entirely possible that depending on how you measure it, Amazon the company has overtaken all the above. Edit: And to be slightly less waffling, I think it's entirely possible it's overtaken them in some of the most obvious ways to measure, such as (global) public consciousness and word association.
  - jfk13 8y ago
    I wonder how things will look in 50 years? Amazon (the company) may look unstoppable at the moment, but huge companies do come and go; in a generation or two, perhaps they'll still be dominating the scene, or perhaps they'll be a forgotten also-ran. I'm pretty sure the Amazon (river/basin) will still be there, and will still be one of the earth's great geographical features; I hope even the Amazon rainforest will still be noteworthy on a world scale.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      In 50 years, the Amazon river/basin could have been geographically swallowed by a new political entity and renamed. Sure, that's much less likely than Amazon the company being defunct (I hope, that seems more likely to be harbinger of world disrupting changes), but I think it's also more likely than Greek mythological scholors deciding to change millennia old characters and concepts. I'm sure we can choose a specific metric to make the Amazon geographic area win, just as we can for any of the others in this comparison, but picking the metric to match the outcome we want doesn't seem the right way to go either. I can definitely see cases for all of them, and I don't know the right metric by which to judge. That does make this an interesting case IMO, as the likelihood of the losers to be upset is high (except maybe Greek mythology, since I don't think they have a strong lobby on their side).
  - perfmode 8y ago
    It should not be without great consternation that a corporation should overtake a people.
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      But that's not happening. There isn't "a people" who want .amazon, there's an intergovernmental organization that supposedly wants to use the TLD for tourism purposes.
      - anoncake 8y ago
        > an intergovernmental organization So, multiple peoples?
        ryanlol 8y ago
        Just as Amazon the company has multiple shareholders I suppose
        anoncake 8y ago
        So what? It is still a corporation and its interests are irrelevant compared to the one of a people, let alone multiple.
        ryanlol 8y ago
        Why exactly is Amazon.com less relevant than the Amazon tourist industry? They don't want .amazon for "the people", they want it for the tourism industry which also consists of faceless corporations.
        anoncake 8y ago
        What Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela are going to do with the domain they have a right to is their business.
- OJFord 8y ago
  Hasn't it? Would be an interesting poll, broken down by region, but speaking for myself if you say 'Amazon' to me without context, I'll immediately think of the company. Similarly 'twitter' in older literature throws me off for a second. I'd bet it's plummetted in usage in recent years. It's just about familiarity - I use some part of Amazon the company almost every day, but have no ties to _the_ Amazon, nor see it as frequently in news items.
  - why-el 8y ago
    How about if you think of it in terms of the bond that such branding rests on. Surely, if my tribe, home, and history is tied to the name Amazon, then that beats (for some definition of "beats") one's relationship with an online retail place? I am not arguing for any side, but I do acknowledge that the Amazonian community's right to the name rests on a very good argument.
    - ribosometronome 8y ago
      >Surely, if my tribe, home, and history is tied to the name Amazon, then that beats (for some definition of "beats") one's relationship with an online retail place? Which goes back to crazygringo's point: >Because if it were for locals, it would be .amazonia and .amazonas. (Similarly to how Germany is .de, not .gr or something like that.)
    - OJFord 8y ago
      Oh, I absolutely don't mean to comment on who 'deserves' (for some definition that includes 'is allowed to pay for the privilege of') it - that's a judgement I'm glad not to have to make - I was responding purely to the point about 'brand' strength.
      - why-el 8y ago
        Noted. We are in agreement.
    - weberc2 8y ago
      > I am not arguing for any side, but I do acknowledge that the Amazonian community's right to the name rests on a very good argument. I'm also not arguing for any side, but I don't think your "bond" argument is particularly convincing. Namely, it strikes me as too vague in the general case and thus too hard to adjucate. The things you use to nail it down (tribe, home, history) are specific to this case, but don't generalize well. Even if you were able to address those problems, it doesn't compell me to think that these people deserve the English name for the geography in question (perhaps especially if those people don't really identify with the geography in question, but rather as nations who happen to live in that geography?). In any case, it's a puzzling and interesting question.
- weberc2 8y ago
  I did not even know there was an Amazon people (I knew there were tribes that lived in the Amazon rainforest, but I did not know they were "Amazon" [Amazons? Amazonians?]). Anyway, the more salient point, I think, is that Amazon the company is not named after the tourism business (to the best of my knowledge) contrary to the claim upthread.
  - munk-a 8y ago
    I believe Amazon's brand origin can be traced back to a stupid bit of wordplay like... "Books are made from paper, paper comes from trees, we want to sell all the books so we're naming ourselves after all the trees - hence, The Amazon"
  - pcstl 8y ago
    There weren't. The Greeks had a legend about a tribe of warrior-women who lived in the forest and were known as the "Amazons", and when the Spanish first found what we now know as the Amazon forest the natives tried to fight them off. The spanish conquistadores were so impressed by the fact that the indigenous women fought together with the men that they started calling the place the "forest of the Amazons", after the old Greek myth. The name stuck. But there was never an actual tribe called the "Amazons".
  - orhmeh09 8y ago
    Its original backend was called Obidos, which is part of the Amazon River, FWIW.
barberousse 8y ago
Greek myths aren't directly a source of significant monetary value, the Amazon rainforest is. Also, the rainforest was named so because the Portugese conquerors were surprised as fuck to find women fighting them alongside the men in certain tribes, so the name is meant to honor them in the first place, not ancient Greek culture.
hopler 8y ago
Ancient Greece no longer exists.
duxup 8y ago
I had a similar discussion with someone after a small spat broke out over authenticity and the dreaded cultural appropriation of ... food. Things we associate with a place, or people, a culture, or a nation can at times be surprisingly recent or not quite as we might assume or have origins we might not expect. Food in particular that gets associated with one group of people often has origins in far off places that you might not expect. Key aspects of those might have only recently been used and their origins might be the other side of the world. So what is authentic and who really "owns" that thing when everyone is combining and experimenting? I think of blue jeans or even just denim as an American thing but... http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/karlins/master-of-blue-jeans1-25-11_detail.asp?picnum=2 http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/karlins/master-of-b...
larkeith 8y ago
Crucial difference here: the business chose to use the name of the extant location. The name of the region derives from that of the river, which was named by an external group, without input from the local populous (unless you count attacking a Spanish expedition as "input").
anoncake 8y ago
Does Greece even want it?

8ytecoder 8y ago

Brands are always in a flux. Amazon the river and the forests and the people have a stronger brand now than the mythical Gods. But Amazon the company has not overtaken all the above.

kbenson 8y ago
> But Amazon the company has not overtaken all the above. That might be true, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion. I think it's entirely possible that depending on how you measure it, Amazon the company has overtaken all the above. Edit: And to be slightly less waffling, I think it's entirely possible it's overtaken them in some of the most obvious ways to measure, such as (global) public consciousness and word association.
- jfk13 8y ago
  I wonder how things will look in 50 years? Amazon (the company) may look unstoppable at the moment, but huge companies do come and go; in a generation or two, perhaps they'll still be dominating the scene, or perhaps they'll be a forgotten also-ran. I'm pretty sure the Amazon (river/basin) will still be there, and will still be one of the earth's great geographical features; I hope even the Amazon rainforest will still be noteworthy on a world scale.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    In 50 years, the Amazon river/basin could have been geographically swallowed by a new political entity and renamed. Sure, that's much less likely than Amazon the company being defunct (I hope, that seems more likely to be harbinger of world disrupting changes), but I think it's also more likely than Greek mythological scholors deciding to change millennia old characters and concepts. I'm sure we can choose a specific metric to make the Amazon geographic area win, just as we can for any of the others in this comparison, but picking the metric to match the outcome we want doesn't seem the right way to go either. I can definitely see cases for all of them, and I don't know the right metric by which to judge. That does make this an interesting case IMO, as the likelihood of the losers to be upset is high (except maybe Greek mythology, since I don't think they have a strong lobby on their side).
- perfmode 8y ago
  It should not be without great consternation that a corporation should overtake a people.
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    But that's not happening. There isn't "a people" who want .amazon, there's an intergovernmental organization that supposedly wants to use the TLD for tourism purposes.
    - anoncake 8y ago
      > an intergovernmental organization So, multiple peoples?
      - ryanlol 8y ago
        Just as Amazon the company has multiple shareholders I suppose
        anoncake 8y ago
        So what? It is still a corporation and its interests are irrelevant compared to the one of a people, let alone multiple.
        ryanlol 8y ago
        Why exactly is Amazon.com less relevant than the Amazon tourist industry? They don't want .amazon for "the people", they want it for the tourism industry which also consists of faceless corporations.
        anoncake 8y ago
        What Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela are going to do with the domain they have a right to is their business.
OJFord 8y ago
Hasn't it? Would be an interesting poll, broken down by region, but speaking for myself if you say 'Amazon' to me without context, I'll immediately think of the company. Similarly 'twitter' in older literature throws me off for a second. I'd bet it's plummetted in usage in recent years. It's just about familiarity - I use some part of Amazon the company almost every day, but have no ties to _the_ Amazon, nor see it as frequently in news items.
- why-el 8y ago
  How about if you think of it in terms of the bond that such branding rests on. Surely, if my tribe, home, and history is tied to the name Amazon, then that beats (for some definition of "beats") one's relationship with an online retail place? I am not arguing for any side, but I do acknowledge that the Amazonian community's right to the name rests on a very good argument.
  - ribosometronome 8y ago
    >Surely, if my tribe, home, and history is tied to the name Amazon, then that beats (for some definition of "beats") one's relationship with an online retail place? Which goes back to crazygringo's point: >Because if it were for locals, it would be .amazonia and .amazonas. (Similarly to how Germany is .de, not .gr or something like that.)
  - OJFord 8y ago
    Oh, I absolutely don't mean to comment on who 'deserves' (for some definition that includes 'is allowed to pay for the privilege of') it - that's a judgement I'm glad not to have to make - I was responding purely to the point about 'brand' strength.
    - why-el 8y ago
      Noted. We are in agreement.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    > I am not arguing for any side, but I do acknowledge that the Amazonian community's right to the name rests on a very good argument. I'm also not arguing for any side, but I don't think your "bond" argument is particularly convincing. Namely, it strikes me as too vague in the general case and thus too hard to adjucate. The things you use to nail it down (tribe, home, history) are specific to this case, but don't generalize well. Even if you were able to address those problems, it doesn't compell me to think that these people deserve the English name for the geography in question (perhaps especially if those people don't really identify with the geography in question, but rather as nations who happen to live in that geography?). In any case, it's a puzzling and interesting question.
weberc2 8y ago
I did not even know there was an Amazon people (I knew there were tribes that lived in the Amazon rainforest, but I did not know they were "Amazon" [Amazons? Amazonians?]). Anyway, the more salient point, I think, is that Amazon the company is not named after the tourism business (to the best of my knowledge) contrary to the claim upthread.
- munk-a 8y ago
  I believe Amazon's brand origin can be traced back to a stupid bit of wordplay like... "Books are made from paper, paper comes from trees, we want to sell all the books so we're naming ourselves after all the trees - hence, The Amazon"
- pcstl 8y ago
  There weren't. The Greeks had a legend about a tribe of warrior-women who lived in the forest and were known as the "Amazons", and when the Spanish first found what we now know as the Amazon forest the natives tried to fight them off. The spanish conquistadores were so impressed by the fact that the indigenous women fought together with the men that they started calling the place the "forest of the Amazons", after the old Greek myth. The name stuck. But there was never an actual tribe called the "Amazons".
- orhmeh09 8y ago
  Its original backend was called Obidos, which is part of the Amazon River, FWIW.

barberousse 8y ago

Greek myths aren't directly a source of significant monetary value, the Amazon rainforest is. Also, the rainforest was named so because the Portugese conquerors were surprised as fuck to find women fighting them alongside the men in certain tribes, so the name is meant to honor them in the first place, not ancient Greek culture.

hopler 8y ago

Ancient Greece no longer exists.

duxup 8y ago

I had a similar discussion with someone after a small spat broke out over authenticity and the dreaded cultural appropriation of ... food. Things we associate with a place, or people, a culture, or a nation can at times be surprisingly recent or not quite as we might assume or have origins we might not expect. Food in particular that gets associated with one group of people often has origins in far off places that you might not expect. Key aspects of those might have only recently been used and their origins might be the other side of the world. So what is authentic and who really "owns" that thing when everyone is combining and experimenting? I think of blue jeans or even just denim as an American thing but... http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/karlins/master-of-blue-jeans1-25-11_detail.asp?picnum=2 http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/karlins/master-of-b...

larkeith 8y ago

Crucial difference here: the business chose to use the name of the extant location. The name of the region derives from that of the river, which was named by an external group, without input from the local populous (unless you count attacking a Spanish expedition as "input").

anoncake 8y ago

Does Greece even want it?