I suppose the crux of this issue is what constitutes “someone really vile”.
There’s a very good argument that owning slaves is a truly vile act. Obviously, slavery is morally repugnant. People who owned slaves did something truly horrible. Often many truly horrible things.
But there’s also a pretty good argument that being one of a whole class of slaveowners in a time when it was the general social order, as vile as that social order was, doesn’t constitute individual vileness.
Or maybe it does. I’m conflicted on this subject and can see reasonable people taking either side.
I’m sure that I am participating in a social order that future generations will consider to be totally vile. I’m not sure exactly what that is, but I have a few guesses. I hope that should I also do something individually good enough to get something named after me that those future generations will be kind to me and consider my transgressions in the context they were made. Kinder certainly than they will judge me to have been, mostly through ignorance and the ability to see beyond the culture in which one has been raised, to whichever group I am actively being vile to.
Austin Texas, state capital.
Social Justice Warrior bona fides barely alive.
Gentlemen, womym, and persons of other genders, we can re-name it.
We have the White Liberal guilt.
We have the capability to make the world’s first city name that’s an asterisk.
Texas will be that city.
Loonier than it was before.
Loonier… Leftier… Weirder…
PS: I love Austin. I wish I could live there. I’m only joshing her about her Leftward tilt.
*The asterisk stands for anything you want it to. Old school conservative? Stephen F. Austin. Crunchy Liberal? Berkeley South. Kurt Vonnegut fan? A drawing of your asshole.
Well, there you go. Either Au’sgold or Snistin as the new name. It’ll be chemically correct if nothing else.
I don’t know of any such names. Which ones?
Much more likely is that it got its name because it was the mainland, as opposed to all the islands off its coast. Naming that state after a province of France is somewhat plausible, but you’re going to have to find who did it to be convincing.
When people name a town after someone or something, the ultimate source of the name is not who they’re naming the town after. In the case of New Orleans, it was named after a Duke of Orleans, who was the uncle of the king and his regent. The fact that the name Orleans can be traced back to the Roman Empire is irrelevant.
I’m struggling to think of a large city in the US that’s changed its name and can’t come up with any. It’s not that none have changed their name, but they all did so while they were small.
There are far better candidates than Austin, Texas. If we’re going to start renaming places, we should start with places like Fort Gordon–named after a Confederate General and head of the KKK in Georgia. We honor this person, an enemy of The United States, with a military installation!? Or what about the other nine bases across the country named after Confederate Generals, some of whom were investigated for war crimes? I think Austin, Texas ranks low on the list for places that need to be renamed. Hell, just 60 miles north of there is Fort Hood. They could start there.
Being it’s in East Georgia and on the South Carolina border, I’ve got a delightful proposal for what Union General’s name to give it… I mean, as long as a bunch of people there can’t seem to get over him 150+ years later…