[chrisco255]

We chose a really difficult country name to create an identity around. United States of America citizen just doesn't have the same ring to it as American does. Meanwhile, you know, we also stole Amazon as a word to mean something totally different than a river and region in Brazil.

[ardit33]

wut... amazon is a greek word, which is actually derived from a different older language (the hypothetical pelasgian, the original indigenous people in the balkans).

So, yeah... you can say brazil borrowed that word from the greek language via latin, and the greeks themselves borrowed it from an extinct language...

Am·a·zon /ˈaməˌzän,ˈaməzən/ Learn to pronounce Origin late Middle English: via Latin from Greek Amazōn, explained by the Greeks as ‘without a breast’ (as if from a- ‘without’ + mazos ‘breast’), referring to the fable that the Amazons cut off the right breast so as not to interfere with the use of a bow, but probably a folk etymology of an unknown foreign word.