Re: [HCDX] Colombia or Columbia??

[Don Moore <mooredxer@xxxxxxxxx>]

It is an all-too-common error made by English speakers. The
country's name is Colombia, whether spelled in English or
Spanish. English speakers (at least in the US & Canada) get
confused because we have Washington D.C. (District of
Columbia) and British Columbia, not to mention several
cites & towns, counties, and a major river named Columbia.
And then there's "Hail Columbia, Jem of the Ocean", a
famous US patriotic song dating to the late 1800s. 

In fact, the founding fathers of the United States gave
serious thought to naming us Columbia. That might have been
confusing - Columbians versus Colombians. (But then we
would not have the problem of the word Americans - a term
that fairly can just as well apply to someone from Lima or
Buenos Aires as to someone from Chicago.) On the other
hand, if the US had become Columbia, perhaps Colombia would
have kept Nueva Granada, the name it had until about 1830.
Long time DXers may remember Emisora Nueva Granada in
Bogota, the old name for the RCN network flagship station. 

Emisora Nueva Granada is/was not the only station to pay
homage to a national name that no longer exists. In Ecuador
there is Emisoras Gran Colombia, named after Simon
Bolivar's union of Venezuela, Nueva Granada, and Ecuador,
which fell apart after a few years. In Quezatltenango,
Guatemala there is a MW station named La Voz de los Altos.
Los Altos is a general term for highlands, but there is
another meaning here, too. In the 1830s or so, there was an
attempt to form a breakaway nation named Los Altos in the
western part of Guatemala. 

Besides Los Altos, there were several other "Almost
Countries" in Latin American history. I have an article
about DX targets in them (from 1992) on my website. The
article is at:
http://www.swl.net/patepluma/latindir/almostct.html




=====
Don Moore     mooredxer@xxxxxxxxx
Radio: http://www.swl.net/patepluma   
Family History: http://members.xoom.com/patepluma
General: http://members.tripod.com/donmoore

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