Just read one of Ursula Le Guin's books where humans sent off some unwanted people, no scientists, to another planet and they brought up how hundreds of years into living there, they still give arbitrary names to things. E.g. naming an animal Heron because it kind of resembles one, but this is an alien world, so it is really not.

Anyways, at one point one of the characters asks why people still use the name Victoria for the planet, as this was named by Earth people. And then suggested to just call the planet Mud, since they got so much of it. Was half a joke but later in the book some people do use Mud as a name for it.

Yeah, it should be translated to Bearable and Unbearable.

Just wait until they realize we named everything in space after milk.

Took me too long to remember “Arctic” and “Antarctic” and I kept wondering how “North Pole / South Pole” translated to “Bearlandia / NoBearlandia”

In Chinese (I mean like most dialects), North Pole is just 北极 ("Northern Extreme"), South Pole is 南极 ("Southern Extreme"). Arctic is just 北极 with the extra character 地区 meaning area ("Northern Extreme Area"), Antartica is 南极洲 ("Southern Extreme Continent").

There's no weird etymology involving bears lol

Maybe we should let someone from China or Taiwan contact the aliens?

Just wait until they hear about Virginland.

They're actually called penguinland and no-penguinland

...didn't i just see something about ursus arctos arctos?...

TIL what "Arctic" means.

Nah, isn't it more Towardsbearland and Awayfrombearland?

This joke would be rather hard to translate to my language because we use the same word for dirt (as in, 'soil' - in fact, in certain cases for actual soil, as well) as for Earth. Or ground.

We only have a separate word for the unclean meaning of dirt, or a compound word containing dirt to denote soil.

I can easily imagine this as an actual attempt from a beginner English speaker from home.

But Antarctica doesn’t derive from “not Arctic”, but from ‘opposite of Arctic’. The bear part is right, though.

A bit disappointed this isn't about the funny YouTube song about the Dirt Man