On naming and gender

"'Since both Asia and Africa received their names from women, I do not see why anyone should rightly prevent this [new part] from being called [America]'...

This sounds a lot like Ringmann, who is known to have spent time mulling over the reasons that concepts and places so often had the names of women. 'Why are all the virtues, the intellectual qualities, and the sciences always symbolized as if they belonged to the feminine sex?' he would write in a 1511 essay on the Muses. 'Where does this custom spring from - a usage common not only to the pagan writers but also to the scholars of the church? It originated from the belief that knowledge is destined to be fertile of good works... Even the three parts of the old world received the name of women"

--- The Fourth Part of the World / Toby Lester


Of course, the feminist explanation is that lands are feminine because they are for men to conquer.