Do you have friends that are completely different from you in every aspect so that makes them that much more interesting to you; they seem to know all sorts of things that you think are awesome but would never think to discover yourself? Well I have a couple friends that I have met in Iraq that are like that. They know all sorts of interesting things that I find so neat. The reason I am asking is because I learned the most interesting fact a couple nights back. My running buddy and I had finished our workout and on our cool down mile we always catch up on our day and just talk about things. I have no clue as to how we go on the subject but somehow we got to talking about Christopher Columbus and I learned the most interesting fact. He told me the reason why Indians (Native Americans) are called Indians. I had actually never thought to look it up but now that we were on the subject it did click and I thought “yeah why are they”? Below is an answer from the Internet and pretty much exactly what he told me.
The term Indians as applied to Native Americans, or the indigenous peoples of the Americas, is thought to have originated in a misconception on the part of the Europeans who arrived in Central America in 1492. Since Christopher Columbus began his journey to America with the intent of finding an alternate route to Southeast Asia, he is said to have assumed that the people he came into contact with upon reaching land were Indians. Despite the fact that people probably realized this mistake within hours, the name remained in use. Similarly, the islands in Central America came to be called the "West Indies", as opposed to the "East Indies" that Columbus originally had in mind as his destination.
The next day I was going around to all my co-workers asking them if they knew why Indians were called Indians and almost none of them knew….and they were American. The person who told me wasn’t even American he was English. I thought gosh I wonder what we were learning in school while we should have learned this important fact. LOL When I told Jas the answer he wanted to prove that I was actually right so he looked it up. Mind you Jas is Indian but Indian from India so he found another answer and loved sharing it with me. Below is the answer he came up with.
The myth that has been perpetuated for generations that Columbus thought he was in India and named the natives Indians is nothing more than a myth. The Paugesauks in the late 1980's hired a Spanish ancient dialects linguistics expert to translate Columbus's diary. He found that Columbus was so impressed with the peoples' spirituality and their devotion to the Creator that he referred to them as In Dios meaning walking in God's way. Some person misread that along the way and figured Columbus missed India by half a world and mistakenly referred to the Natives as Indians.
I refuse to believe this hair brained idea and I am sticking to my first reported answer. I find it most believable and just a great story. I love meeting new people and discovering what they know. I know me and my mate Vincent will stay close friends even after we leave Iraq. I can’t wait for him to get back to London and buy his country house so I have an awesome hang out for when I want to escape for a week or so.
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