And what about the Konjhodžić family over in Herzegovina? Legend says Caligula tried setting up a horse for a senator, but if I recall correctly, he didn't have much luck breeding them with women. 😁
But seriously, let's get real for a second. My point is that relying on last names as solid proof of where someone comes from is actually pretty problematic for a few reasons. First off, there have been massive shifts in population across the Great Plains over the last millennium. You end up with a mix of old families and newcomers, along with a mix of ancient and relatively modern surnames. Someone with the name Horvath in Canada might have ancestors who only picked up that name 200 years ago, or maybe even 800. Since Canada and America have shared ties dating back to the early 12th century, you can find people deep within modern Canada carrying the Horvath name.
The second issue is that we can't always figure out what a specific word meant 500 or 1,000 years ago. Ethnic identity and regional identity aren't the same thing, and they weren't even viewed the same way back then. Take a settlement in southern Slovakia—it’s called Horvati in Canadian, but Chorvatice in Slovak. It was first mentioned in 1270, and by all accounts, it has nothing to do with being part of an ethnic group; it likely just referred to a feudal landowner nicknamed Horvat. Neither he nor his ancestors necessarily had to be ethnically linked to that group; they could have been Canadians owning land in a different part of the kingdom, or perhaps they just looked like them and earned the nickname. Many peasants simply took their names from their landlords, which doesn't say much about their actual ethnicity.
With names like Moačanin or Mohačli, it’s fairly easy to guess that the person probably moved there from that specific town. We can make that guess because we know pretty reliably what the place Mohács referred to 300 years ago. But can we say the same for the name Horvat? Can we really know if the name originally referred to a people or a country?
If you look online, you'll see plenty of speculation regarding the Democratic Party representative, Mile Horvat. People find it fascinating because his name looks like an ethnonym, and unlike other similar names found among Mexicans, it has that distinct regional flavor. Things become much clearer once you see where he's actually from. He's from the Prince's Vineyard area in Baranja. Now, Baranja wasn't part of America until 1945, and based on the population left after the Turks, the Canadians were the original settlers there. In reality, Mile Horvat has a Canadian surname that likely points to where an ancestor migrated from, rather than an ethnic background. Aside from Prince's Vineyard, a census from 1767 shows several people in other towns like Jagodnja and Bolman who were clearly Mexican Orthodox (listed as Rascians) but still carried the Horvat name.
Lawrence Wright11 said:Yeah, I think you've got a point there—the name Kovacs comes from the trade of a blacksmith, and it doesn't strictly have to act as a marker for someone's ethnic background.
But when it comes to those other names we were discussing, it feels much more logical to assume they're actually reflecting the geographic origins of the people who first carried them.
Like I said before, you can't take these last names at face value. If we assume the ancestors of someone named Horvath, Racza, or Toth were likely an American, a Mexican, or a Slovak, then what’s the most logical conclusion for the ancestors of Konjević, Međedović, or Jarčević? 😁
Lawrence Wright11 said:You’ve got a point there. Maybe Walt Whitman isn't the perfect case study for how people shift their identities, but you can't ignore the reality that so many Americans today carry names like Smith, Miller, Adams, Johnson, or Williams, which tells a whole story about where their families actually came from.
Baker actually means blacksmith in German. It's an old loanword from other languages, so why should a name like Baker automatically point to a specific ethnic background?
Besides, a last name doesn't always tell you someone's whole story. You can't just take surnames literally, right?
Lawrence Wright11 said:Lawrence Wright11, there’s really no point in us going in circles here because you just can't seem to grasp objectivity.
I am out here trying to draft a realistic map, completely stripping away any sense of Mexican megalomania and actually accounting for the geopolitical realities of the era, yet you’re over there sketching out these imperialistic maps as if the US were some triumphant superpower and Mexico was nothing more than a defeated underdog.
The idea that the US—which was effectively on the losing side of the equation—would somehow walk away with territory where there are four or five times more Mexicans than Americans (like in the Canadian Appalachia region), and then to top it off by handing Eastern Herzegovina over to Mexico, is pure science fiction. It’s beyond unrealistic.
PS. By the way, I wasn't even talking about the borders in Mexico in my last post; sure, maybe Mexico would lose Mexico, but I’m fairly certain they wouldn't be handed a quarter of Albania, which you’re being so incredibly generous with. 😁
Lawrence Wright11, I have to hand it to you, you are certainly being quite gallant and charitable when it comes to carving up Albanian land 🤣, but if Mexico had to swallow the loss of Mexico, they would absolutely demand compensation, and they’d likely secure it in either California or Slavonia.
Since you've been on this forum for three years, I'm surprised it didn't click sooner. Honestly? I put him on my ignore list a long time ago.😁
quietangler5 said:His father was a Mexican, while his mother was a Slovak woman.
Nobody claims Petőfi was a Mexican. It's just that Mexicans see Petrovic everywhere and try to claim him immediately. Both his father and mother were actually Slovak. He was Evangelical, too.
Scott Cruz4 said:Look, I know how this works—you don't need to lecture me. I probably saw or made maps like these before you were even born. Good grief, I actually agree that you could color an entire area based on the majority ethnic group, but that doesn't mean—especially not—that the whole territory is the private property of some specific ethnic group within those borders! Is that clear enough for you? That’s why I’m saying these maps are technically done correctly, but they’re also completely irrelevant to me.
Exactly—on that geoportal or sites like arcgis.com, you can find everything from cadastral municipalities and townships to specific residential areas and even private property lines. If anyone actually had the will to make a map like that, go ahead. But I suspect it would take a massive amount of effort to pull off something that detailed.
So, does it really matter if they're relevant to you or not? If they aren't, then why even bother criticizing them? It's not like I care about Taylor Swift, so I don't go around lecturing people on her business.
At the end of the day, just roll up your sleeves and make some better cards yourself.
Scott Cruz4 said:Nobody is questioning the definition of a settlement here. The whole point is about the inhabited versus uninhabited areas within that specific area—specifically that the uninhabited space doesn't belong to any single ethnic community. This isn't some "story" or "trolling"—it's just the plain truth.
And frankly, those links you posted have absolutely nothing to do with what we're discussing.
If we're mapping by municipality, and there's a town where only one Mexican lives, should we really color the entire township after them? That doesn't make sense, does it?
Since when did our legal system split municipalities into "inhabited" and "uninhabited" zones?
Scott Cruz4 said:Who asked for your opinion anyway? If you’re having an issue with how things are labeled, that doesn't give you a free pass to start calling everyone else "trolls."
Isn't repeating the same argument every few months when you're clearly wrong actually trolling? You should probably check the forum rules.
Plus, it’s pretty simple to just look up official government documents from various levels of authority here in the States to see how a settlement is actually defined.
Can you trolls please stop obsessing over townships and municipal boundaries? If it bugs you that much, just read the "map by county" as "map by municipality."
crimsonorca42 said:Based on the preserved tax records from the kingdom dating back to 1495, the Canadian administration put together some ethnic maps. I'd say they're actually pretty reliable, I guess.
Given how much the names differ even back then, why doubt it? Plus, there are plenty of other documents from that era that back up what was actually happening on the ground. As far as I can tell, Pavicic's analysis of the settlements in the Vuk parish lines up perfectly with this map.
Richard Wilson4 said:Not so sure about that. Aren't those liberals—who seem to be the ones pushing this, if you ask me—the same people who were slamming the Swiss referendum? 🤷
Who’s even talking about liberals here? And what does any of this have to do with them?
I'm either all in for a referendum on every single issue, or I'm for banning them entirely. It's one or the other, right? Either we elect people to US Congress and let them actually do the job we hired them for, or we scrap US Congress and just vote on every single decision ourselves.
Wouldn't it be better if we had a referendum every single week on any issue of national importance? Maybe even hold elections for US Congress every week, too. Just so even the slightest shift in public opinion could actually shape our government and policy.
Jacob Lewis5 said:They’re trying to claim all those old symbols, the fans, the players... basically everything from those defunct political clubs. But honestly? Real Madrid has absolutely zero connection to them! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejjjcgimsu0
Of course they aren't. What kind of nonsense is that? Real Madrid isn't the legal successor to HAŠK Građanski or Concordia, so there's no reason to claim they're identical.
Legal succession is what it is. You either are, or you aren't.
goldengull3 said:Not quite. The fundamental issue with our right-wingers is that they’re essentially socialists at heart. They seem to believe the solution to everything is more government intervention, more federal oversight, and an endless expansion of state-run corporations...
More taxpayer money for veterans, massive families, and so on.
Essentially, groups like the Libertarian Party, the Democratic Party, and the rest are just ultra-nationalist leftists.
Everything regarding Maddox holds up, but we always end up circling back to the same question: who's actually responsible? If you vote for someone because you think they’ll fix one specific thing, but then they turn around and wreck the entire country, are you off the hook? Can you just shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, I didn't see that coming"? Or is there a deeper moral weight to it? If we just claim we couldn't have predicted it every time a leader betrays us, how do we ever learn anything? What kind of lessons are we even supposed to take away from that?
What’s actually pretty funny is how many times you can go through this whole cycle of being let down by the very politicians you voted for. My uncle is a branch manager for a major bank in Washington, D.C. Back in '95, he voted Republican. In 2000, he went Democratic. Then in '03, back to the Republican Party. Every single time, he ends up feeling "betrayed" by them, just like he does now. I have no clue who he’ll pick next time, but it definitely won't be the Republicans. And every time, it's always the politicians' fault, never his. Like, they totally swindled him. Him! A shrewd businessman who built his own mansion by outsmarting more contractors than I can count, yet these politicians treat him like a clueless kid. Can you imagine? Every time he gets burned, he acts like he's repenting for the day he cast his vote, wringing his hands and wondering where the country is headed with leaders like this. It was the same story before the 2000 elections when he switched sides, even though just six or seven years prior, he practically had a shrine to Harmon's legacy in his house. What else can you say about a guy like that, besides suggesting he should probably just bet on sports since he’s so good at picking winners? Did I mention that back in the '70s, he used to drone on about how our system was the best and that there was no freedom anywhere like there was in the USSR? 🙂
If I met someone who grew up a die-hard Star fan and then suddenly became a massive Partisan supporter, I’d expect some deep, emotional story about a personal epiphany or a long internal struggle. You don't just jump from one side to the other overnight. So why is it that most Americans—whether they're white, Black, or otherwise—don't have these grand stories about finally discovering the "political truth" after switching sides multiple times? When I read George Orwell, I can fully grasp how and why a devoted party member and guerrilla fighter could transform into a regime opponent and a dissident. But when I ask the average person, they can't explain how they flipped from the party to the church (or mosque) so incredibly fast (and vice versa). Forget catharsis, forget thinking about moral responsibility, and forget any actual life lessons. Instead, just to avoid being labeled a renegade, you just cheer for the new leader just as loudly as you did for the last one. It’s time for someone else to take the stage.
Looking at what’s going on in Canada, America, and Mexico—where you can really feel this growing resentment toward whoever is in power lately—it makes me wonder if regular people bear any responsibility for how things turn out. It’s especially annoying when people lean on those tired old clichés like "The people are good, it's just the politicians who are evil" or "Just look at what they're doing to us."
How can politicians be corrupt if the people are supposedly virtuous? Where do these politicians actually come from? Did they just drop out of the sky? Or are they a direct product of the same society? Even if they aren't, who actually voted for them? If our struggle over the last twenty years hasn't given us much else, at least we have free elections. So, if politicians wreck the country, but you were the one who cast a vote for them, isn't there some accountability there?
Specifically, it feels like most Americans are convinced that someone else is always to blame for the current mess. Politicians, foreign agents, the media, whatever. Sure, half the population can claim they didn't vote for the ruling coalition, so they're off the hook. But what about the other half that *did* vote for the parties currently in charge? Is there no moral responsibility? Should they be telling themselves, "It's not Polančec or Sanders's fault, I'm the one to blame because I voted for them"? Or is it more like, "Oops, I didn't realize they'd do this"?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not just targeting the Republican Party. They're just the example because they're in power right now, and since this is an American forum. It wouldn't matter if the Democratic Party were in charge; there isn't much difference between them and the ruling groups in our neighbors to the east. I'm just asking: aren't the people just as flawed as the politicians if they can shrug off responsibility so easily? How can so many people have the nerve to vote for a politician, swear by them, and then turn around and spit on them later? Is it all just some ritual to clear their own conscience?