LiteralHipster wrote:I'll present you with a much better analogy to the USA: my own country. Long ago, Argentina was named simply Provincias Unidas del Sud (United Provinces of the South). Note that the structure is the exact same structure used in United States of America, since a province is almost exactly the same as a state, and "Sud" is not a specific name like Mexico, but merely the region where those provinces are located (like "America" in USA).
Now, if we had done the same thing the US did, we would have started using "the South" to refer to ourselves, snatching the word already in use to designate millions of people living below the Equator. We (or, rather, the people who lived here at the time) didn't. The country was referred by everyone, both inside and outside its frontiers, as simply "Provincias Unidas" until a better name came along.
The country preceding Argentina was more commonly known in English as Rio de la Plata - the country in question's more common name being Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata (less frequently known as Provincias Unidas en Sud América, or de Sudamérica - I can't actually find an example of it being referred to as "Provincias Unidas del Sud"). If you said "United Provinces", people would have assumed you meant the United Provinces of Central America.
Equally, I suspect the reason no-one gave a shit about the name being vague and also easily referring to several other countries - both the "United Provinces" and the "of South America" parts - was because it was only the name used by the revolutionary government, and the country post-independence was known as the Argentine Republic.
Regardless, I think it's ridiculous to assume the early Argentinians decided to use "Provincias Unidas" to refer to their country specifically so as not to steal the identities of everyone else in South America.