Apropos of nothing much but just on the general theme, when I worked for a few defence companies in Europe, it was common to rename equipment or systems for the Australian market. We'd come up with some way to justify the renaming; often there was some small change or configuration alteration we could point to. We had to rename feminine sounding names or acronyms to something that sounded suitably roughty-toughty for the Australian market.

I genuinely never knew how necessary that was; if it was just something we'd ended up doing based on rumour and speculation, or if re-acronyming something from AMELIE to TOUGHGUY really did make it more likely to get the sale in Australia.

I always found that particular convention incredibly gruesome and dystopian.

The US genocided the native Americans and then use their names on their death machines they use for killing other people.

It is a bit bizarre given the role the US Army played in that genocide. But the Army does only use those tribal names with formal permission from the tribes themselves.

Interesting! Do you have any more information on that? Never knew.

The only information there resembling 'formal permission' is this quote -

>On June 10, 2012, Lakota elders ritually blessed two new South Dakota Army National Guard UH-72A Lakotas at a traditional ceremony on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Ceremonies like these happened often over the past several decades.

German tanks have always(?) been named after mammals, mostly after cats.

Not always, during WW2 most of their tanks were simply named "Panzer" ("Armor") with a version number. They also had the big cat tanks at this time too though.

Why continue to use the incorrect and offensive term “indians”? You even quoted it, so I’m confused why you used it at all.

Tl;Dr: it's tricky. and because it's not that simple.

I don't know your background and maybe you're from a first nation or tribe, but there isn't a common agreement between the populations of existing tribes and nations on what is offensive or incorrect. This isn't to say that any term is acceptable, but Indians, however incorrectly labeled by a colonizing group a few hundred years ago, is literally how some choose to identify themselves here in North America.

I say this as someone from India and event there, there isn't a common agreement or knowledge to arrive at an "inoffensive" term for folks who live here. Most just use the descriptor left by the British and say "Red Indians" with no malice implied.

this was interesting to watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ

As I said, "in an ironic twist of linguistic history".

This is a story about a new helicopter, in India. But in the america's long ago "indian" was applied to indigenous groups by people looking for a route to India who didn't know where they were. And then, centuries later, the names for those groups were adopted as names for American helicopters. It is a long joke that I guess not everyone can appreciate.

Thanks! It totally went over my head, I thought you must have had some justification due to the quotes.

Because it’s not offensive or incorrect. American Indians have adopted and use the term themselves. Most official American Indian organizations are named as such, and not as “Native American” or “First Nations”, though the latter is also catching on, especially in Canada. Do some more research before you accuse someone of being insensitive.

Like the AIM -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Movement

Well, the Royal Navy had "tribal class" destroyers, of which I remember only the HMS Ashanti, and perhaps the Pathan. Whether the eponymous "tribes" appreciated the tributes, I never heard.

The US Navy has some well-understood conventions, including leading-class warships (one battleships, now nuclear submarines) named after states, aircraft carriers named after earlier warships (Enterprise, Wasp) or battles (Yorktown, Saratoga).

Its the same with our (german) tanks: Its allways a big cat since WWII