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Friday, February 28, 2014

Say What

Came across this photo today:
DILI, Timor Leste (Feb. 25, 2014) Timor Leste Defense Force soldiers during a training exercise with sailors from the guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd. U.S Navy photo by Jay C. Pugh

Timor Leste? Where is that? I think I've run across it before, but I'm not sure, so I Google it and I get this:
East Timor or Timor-Leste, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Australasia.
What!?! Timor Leste is in Australia!?! That can't be right, so I follow the link and discover that not only did I miss a couple of letters, but other people have gotten these terms, and several others, confused as well.
So how did we get this mess? Wikipedia explains:
The origin of the name Austrasia is Germanic, meaning "eastern land". The latinisation is confusing as German "Ost" is "east", but Latin "auster"/ "australis" is "south". The same can be seen with the name Austria.

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