Until now, the word for the Americas in Bakom was amik, from European words including English “America”. However, recently I decided that this isn’t the right word.

Part of the goal of Bakom is to be a culturally neutral language, and by extension to be a decolonized language. If indigenous people of the Americas had to use a word derived from a colonizer language such as amik to refer to their own land, that would defeat the purpose of the language.

So I decided to search for a new name. I considered calquing “Turtle Island”, perhaps as digatkot, but that seemed too long. I also thought about dinat “high land” from Navajo Kéyah dah siʼánígíí or difon “deep land” from Nahuatl Ixachitlan.