Jeogeot Continent

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Hello all. I think that I've solved a little mystery today; of how to correctly pronounce the continent name of Jeogeot. And no, its not pronounced like the French car builder Peugeot! And also what Jeogoet actually means!

I got my sources from an early map of the SL grid drawn by Jack Linden (2004-2010), titled "Jack's Map O' The Gridde" which I found while nosing around at New Kadath Lighthouse Gallery, which has an extensive museum-quality collection of old and new SL maps exhibited at the lighthouse. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/New Kadath/35/45/23

At the foot of Jack Linden's map is this image, there is the continent we call Jeogeot - which is actually labelled  지구 in Korean. Historically, Jeogeot was also known as "The Korean Continent".

지구 is a Korean word and translates to English as "jigu". 지구 Jigu is roughly pronounced as tzchig-oo. Listen to the translation here: https://translate.google.co.uk/?hl=en-GB&sl=ko&tl=en&text=지구&op=translate

According to Google Translate and Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/지구) Jigu means "Earth" (with a capital E, so its a noun). It also means "district", "zone" or "area". I don't speak Korean, so I imagine "jigu" in its Jeogeot context is a mix of all the words and means "an area of ground", or "a strip of earth". Earth as in soil, ground or dirt, so not just literally "planet Earth".

Therefore, I'm theorising that "jigu" had been deliberately misspelled into the ficticious English-language name "Jeogeot" by a very creative Linden map maker. He probably changed Jigu's first "jig" syllable into "Jeog", and used a J in place of that very asian "tzch" sound that doesn't really exist in the English language. Similarly, the second "u" syllable became "eot", and adding a silent letter T to its end to make it more "exotic" looking when read, perhaps a bit like the "eot" in Peugeot, the French car manufacturer.

Jeogeot  is pronounced "tzchig-oo" !

Mystery solved!

Edited April 12, 2021 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Rabid Cheetah]

That's pretty cool

Edited April 12, 2021 by Rabid Cheetah

[ArgontheDevil Ormega]

And here we all thought that the Lab had just had an internal contest to see who could come up with the silliest name.

[Juliana Lethdetter]

Hey, all--  I wanted to take a moment to chime in on this topic, since it came up last year when I was interviewed via voice for an SL web program, and had to say all these names out loud.  (Full Disclosure:  I'm the Curator of New Kadath Lighthouse Art Gallery, the place with the maps exhibit kindly mentioned by the OP.)

I ran these images and names past a native Korean speaker who is not a member of Second Life, without prior explanation of the context.  Shown the Jack Linden "Map o' the Gridde" image captured above, he immediately identified the Hangul characters as  지구, meaning "earth", which he said he would romanize as "Jeejoo", and which he pronounced "chee-goo".  (After flatly observing that the outline of Jeogeot shown on the map was not Korea. 😄 )  "Jigu" is a similar romanization, and his pronunciation matches what SarahKB7 describes well enough, so I would concur with her assessment on those points.

However, the following theory, that a creative Linden romanization of "jigu" or similar lead to "Jeogeot" is less plausible to me--  or at least, lacks any evidence I know of.  Shown the word "Jeogeot", the Korean speaker (again, immediately) translated it as 저것, which he said he personally would romanize as "Juhgut" instead, and which he pronounced as "Chuh-gutt".  He defined it as meaning "that thing".  A (sadly uncited) Wiktionary article breaks it down identically, translating it as a compilation of 저 (jeo, “that”) + 것 (geot, “thing”), and noting that it indicates a thing that is "far away from the speaker and listener", a qualification one can easily imagine as relevant to a previously unexplored continent.  I ran that more specific qualification past him as well, and he agreed with it also.

A name which translates as "that thing" isn't as romantic or sensical as a variation on "earth", but ArgontheDevil's observation notwithstanding, features in SL have been named equally strange things.  Either way, if the issue is the correct Korean vocal pronunciation of "Jeogeot", 지구 / "tzchig-oo" is not correct.  저것 / "chuh-gutt" is.

I find the absence of common-knowledge information or references on these points perplexing, as the SL community is both robust and long-standing, and the events in question occurred within living memory.  There simply have to be Residents (or Lindens!) who were present at the time of the continent's creation, and are still, and who remember the circumstances and rationale behind its naming.  I'd welcome having some of them chime in here.

[Mollymews]

42 minutes ago, Juliana Lethdetter said:

There simply have to be Residents (or Lindens!) who were present at the time of the continent's creation, and are still, and who remember the circumstances and rationale behind its naming.  I'd welcome having some of them chime in here.

try reaching out to Carl Metropolitan who put the names of the continents on the NCI Map back in 2008. The names that we know them as today

[Yuumo Ichibara]

4 hours ago, Juliana Lethdetter said:

Either way, if the issue is the correct Korean vocal pronunciation of "Jeogeot", 지구 / "tzchig-oo" is not correct.  저것 / "chuh-gutt" is.

I speak Korean as a third language and I agree with everything you wrote. In English, just think of the words JAW (but with a softer J sound) plus GUT, the pronunciation of Jeogeot is a lot closer to that than “tzchig-oo”. I do not know the intended meaning or concept behind the continent name but as you wrote in Korean 저것 (Jeogeot) does mean “that thing” (pointing to something over there), opposed to 이것 (Igeot) or “this thing here.”

It always intrigued me when I see a region named with a word from a language I speak, and I sometimes wonder how LL chooses names. For instance, the region SHINDA sounds very morbid to me because in Japanese it means died or deceased. I don´t think I would like to live there even if someone offered land for free...

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

The map says 지구 (jigu, "Earth" and "region"), not 저것 (jeogeot, "that thing").

At a glance, to non-Korean speakers, the characters of 지구 and 저것 look similar. Perhaps Jack Linden made an unintentional mistake when he labelled his map with 지구  instead of 저것 ? 

Edited April 21, 2021 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Yuumo Ichibara]

1 hour ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Perhaps Jack Linden made an unintentional mistake when he labelled his map with 지구  instead of 저것 ? 

This was what I thought too, or maybe it was the other way around and somebody made an error in the romanization? Only Jack Linden will know. It is very interesting to uncover the story behind the continent and region names.

[Juliana Lethdetter]

On 4/20/2021 at 11:35 PM, Mollymews said:

try reaching out to Carl Metropolitan who put the names of the continents on the NCI Map back in 2008. The names that we know them as today

That was an excellent reminder, Molly, thank you.  I should have started there!

(His earliest drafts of the NCI maps date to 2007, by the way.  I wasn't aware of that, as the copies in the Maps of Second Life exhibit at the Lighthouse are the "final" versions, dating from 2009.)

On 4/21/2021 at 5:33 AM, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

 Perhaps Jack Linden made an unintentional mistake when he labelled his map with 지구  instead of 저것 ? 

On 4/21/2021 at 6:57 AM, Yuumo Ichibara said:

This was what I thought too, or maybe it was the other way around and somebody made an error in the romanization?

Let's get the map in question up here, for starters, so we can all see what's being discussed:

Carl observed that the Jack Linden map appears to postdate almost all of the construction of Jeogeot.  His personal copy of it, which he created himself from a screenshot he took of the original in Jack Linden's office, is dated to 1/3/2008, and is the earliest copy I know of.  Given that, and the fact that the map also depicts Corsica, Nautilus and Satori (here labeled the "Japanese Continent", more on that in a minute), we can confidently date the original to around late 2007--  a date that fits the established timeline of the appearance of the continents.  (That is, unless you want to believe that Jack released a map showing the outlines of multiple continents before they were actually finished on the Grid, which I can find no evidence for, and stretches credibility.)

Carl's earliest version of the NCI map in 2007 already had "Jeogeot" identified as the primary name.  But there's an even earlier map of the Grid, created in April 2006 by Dyne Telemasca, a detail of which is below.  (It's actually in the same room as the Jack Linden map at the Lighthouse.)

Here you can see that Dyne has captured the continent in mid-construction, with only the Northern tip extant--  and it's already labeled "Jeogeot".  Given this as the case, there's simply no way the name Jeogeot can be related to or derivative of the Jack Linden map at all.  It predates it.

The contrary theory, that Jack somehow meant to put the Korean characters for "jeogeot" on his map and accidentally put "jigu" instead is (I suppose) theoretically possible--  but again, for me, it stretches credibility.  The "Japanese Continent" got the name "Satori" as the result of a Resident survey in 2007, the same year the Jack Linden map was made;  the characters next to that on his map are katakana, primarily used to spell out foreign words via phonetization, and say "ho-mu" (with a long O), presumably to mean "home".  But no one is arguing he meant to put "satori" (or anything else), and accidentally wrote "home."  He knew what he was doing.  He used the "Korean Continent" and "Japanese Continent" designations because the opening of those continents corresponded to the localization of the Second Life client in those countries, and then, if I had to guess, threw in a snippet from each language for color.  Or maybe to indicate what HE would have liked to have seen them called.

If it makes anyone feel any better, he apparently confused everyone at the time, too.  A copy of the map shown in Wizard Gynoid's Flickr account on March 27th, 2008 notes that, "The map appears to obfuscate two issues, i.e. the name of the southern continent and the name of the continent directly below nautilus".  So it goes.

I'm continuing to make inquiries.

[Jack]

Jack Linden here. Fun to see this topic pop up; thought I'd try my old login and reply (though weirdly it shows as a new account which is kinda sad).

Anyway, Jeogeot was just a bit of fun. Jeo = This (distant) and Geot = Thing.  So it was a playful way to refer to a continent that was a long way south.. this distant thing.

I added Korean and Japanese words to have some localised characters on there (Home and Earth). I didn't decide to officially name them that, it was just to add some interest to the map.

 

Jack

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Wow. A lovely unexpected surprise to have you reply to this thread, @Jack and also thankyou for your explanation of the naming of Jeogeot continent !

If I may, the question that everyone will want to ask you now.... How do you actually pronounce Jeogeot ? 

Is it "Chuh-gutt" ( 저것 Jeo Geot "that (distant) thing" ) or not ?! 

Edited April 27, 2021 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Jack]

Oh jeez @SarahKB7 Koskinen I've no idea. It's been a very long time since I've had to think about the region or sim names we used for SL; at the height of SL's growth in the early days we were putting up hundreds of sims per month. 

Jack