Rhode Island to change it's formal name

Arcade22

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Arcade22
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Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo has signed an executive order announcing the state would move forward with changing its official name due to its ties to American slavery.

The state’s official name, “The State of*Rhode Island*and Providence Plantations,” appears on state documents. But the order would shorten it to just “Rhode Island”.

...

Harold Metts, Rhode Island’s only Black state senator, introduced the 2020 bill. He said: “Whatever the meaning of the term ‘plantations’ in the context of Rhode Island’s history, it carries a horrific connotation when considering the [country’s] tragic and racist history.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/24/rhode-island-official-name-change-governor-slavery

Given the ignorance some people demonstrate it's perhaps unexpected that the article does not mention the actual original meaning of "plantation": it's an older English word for colony and had nothing to do with racism or slavery.
 
I'm just sooooooooooooo sure that "The number of people who will now be upset about this, will call it virtue signaling, and start hand wringing over which names we have to change next" will not vastly outnumber the number of people who know that "Rhode Island" wasn't the state's full official name a week ago.
 
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Arcade22 said:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/24/rhode-island-official-name-change-governor-slavery

Given the ignorance some people demonstrate it's perhaps unexpected that the article does not mention the actual original meaning of "plantation": it's an older English word for colony and had nothing to do with racism or slavery.
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And gay can mean glad, carefree, wanton or homosexual.

What matters is how the word is actually used and understood today - not the words history. And I suggest in countries like Jamaica and the USA - to give 2 examples - the word is inextricably tied into slavery.
 
Outside of the "Commonwealth" term a few states use instead of "state" Rhode Island does seem to be the only state I can find firm reference to having a longer "official" name or any other weird variation on how they are named.

But this is like something I mentioned the previously, the "Well technically a group of (so and so animals) is called a..." problem.

"A group of (Animals) is called a..."

No. No it isn't. No group of specific animals is called an anything.

If you see a bunch of one type of animal you are going to refer to using the same dozen or so at most handful of specific generic terms; herd, flock, pack, school, swarm, etc.

Nobody ever casually and organically in real life human conversations refer to a shrewdness of apes or a shadow of jaguars or a parliament of owls or a conspiracy of lemurs.

These terms literally only exist inside trivia lists about what groups of animals are called. A few outlier cases; like say "a murder of crows" do occasionally pop up but that's only because the term itself is unique and/or bizarre enough to lend itself to puns and wordplay, I still wouldn't call that organic uses of the terms in their so called proper usage.

And it's not a case of these being the "technical" terms not used by laypeople. There are 649 articles containing the word "Ape" in the archives of the Etymology and Zoology Journal. The world "Shrewdness" doesn't appear once.

Same thing here. No "Rhode Island" is not technically known as anything other than Rhode Island if the other name only comes up in the topic about it having another name.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Outside of the "Commonwealth" term a few states use instead of "state" Rhode Island does seem to be the only state I can find firm reference to having a longer "official" name or any other weird variation on how they are named.

But this is like something I mentioned the previously, the "Well technically a group of (so and so animals) is called a..." problem.

"A group of (Animals) is called a..."

No. No it isn't. No group of specific animals is called an anything.

If you see a bunch of one type of animal you are going to refer to using the same dozen or so at most handful of specific generic terms; herd, flock, pack, school, swarm, etc.

Nobody ever casually and organically in real life human conversations refer to a shrewdness of apes or a shadow of jaguars or a parliament of owls or a conspiracy of lemurs.

These terms literally only exist inside trivia lists about what groups of animals are called. A few outlier cases; like say "a murder of crows" do occasionally pop up but that's only because the term itself is unique and/or bizarre enough to lend itself to puns and wordplay, I still wouldn't call that organic uses of the terms in their so called proper usage.

And it's not a case of these being the "technical" terms not used by laypeople. There are 649 articles containing the word "Ape" in the archives of the Etymology and Zoology Journal. The world "Shrewdness" doesn't appear once.
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This is off topic, but I find this odd. Of course these are the names of groups of stuff. By the same power that dictates what every other word means - people agree that's that what they mean.

To pretend that it's not the case just because it's not 'official' in some way I find odd.
 
Arcade22 said:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/24/rhode-island-official-name-change-governor-slavery

Given the ignorance some people demonstrate it's perhaps unexpected that the article does not mention the actual original meaning of "plantation": it's an older English word for colony and had nothing to do with racism or slavery.
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My guess is the name change has been advocated for a long time, just because no one ever calls the state by that name. It's more one of those trivia questions, an historical curiosity that the smallest state has the longest name. In actual practice, it's always just "Rhode Island", which is kind of interesting because it isn't on an Island, and no one knows the origin of the name.

However, I do find it a bit irritating that the name change is prompted by people who don't understand the meaning of words, but figure there must be something wrong with it because elsewhere that word was used to mean something entirely different. "I don't understand what you said, but it sounds bad!" is an unfortunate way to shape public policy.
 
It's niggardly all over again.

Big Bad Bob and Snoop attending get it:

 
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Yawn.

Personally I have a bigger issue with "Providence" than Plantation.
 
It honestly sounds like something that might be dragged out by a Freeman On the Land. "This document says that I owe taxes to Rhode Island, but there's no such state. It's "The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations". Unless I get a document from them, I'm ignoring these demands."
 
I have a bigger issue with the use of the apostrophe in "it's". It should be "its", although given the ignorance some people demonstrate I suppose it's not unexpected.
 
Darat said:
And gay can mean glad, carefree, wanton or homosexual.

What matters is how the word is actually used and understood today - not the words history. And I suggest in countries like Jamaica and the USA - to give 2 examples - the word is inextricably tied into slavery.
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You've convinced me, Rhode Island shall be renamed to Gay Island.
 
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Plantation in America has a deeply unfortunate nuance which isn't actually in its literal meaning, but it's what everyone calls to mind when you mention the word.

It's not all roses over the pond either as the plantation of Ulster in the early 1600s is the policy which parcelled out land there to British Protestants and led us eventually to the troubles of Northern Ireland.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm just sooooooooooooo sure that "The number of people who will now be upset about this, will call it virtue signaling, and start hand wringing over which names we have to change next" will not vastly outnumber the number of people who know that "Rhode Island" wasn't the state's full official name a week ago.
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I actually did know that was the name, though had pretty well forgotten about it until I saw the post. I am firmly in the "don't give a **** either way" camp on this one.

ETA: On further consideration, count me in the "for" camp for reasons of brevity, and making the official name match what everyone calls the state anyway, as much as for whatever negative connotation the word "plantation" may have. I would guess that, never in the 300+ year history of the state and its predecessor colony, has anybody used its full name outside of official documents or speeches. It's a name the cries out to be shortened.
 
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shemp said:
It's not an island. A more accurate name would be "South Massachusetts." Also, there's already a Gay Island in Maine.

https://mapcarta.com/22275946

I would propose instead "Gay Underbelly of Massachusetts."
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IIRC, there is an actual Rhode Island somewhere of the coast that's the reason that "Rhode Island" is part of the former official name. Besides, it's not South Massachusetts; it's East Connecticut.
 
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