Reagant's post wasn't criticism, and it was made after I sent Reagant a PM asking about better river names; a fix made because of Martin's post. I didn't ignore his post, I just didn't like how it was worded as it seemed to me to be overly-hostile and lacking in constructive criticism.
ITTL, the British settle the area around the Mississippi watershed in North America, starting near OTL New Orleans. This is due to the fact that England gaining Brazil early gave them more incentive to colonize North America, particularly a region rich for trading and close enough to keep contact with Brazil. Since the name "Mississippi" IOTL is a French rendering of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Algonquin) name for the river, Misi-ziibi (Great River), the name isn't set in stone, and English settlers eventually bastardize it into a more Anglicized and pseudo-classical kind of name. Messipia, being in a good position and gaining a number of colonists with a high birth rate, quickly grows and they take over the Florida peninsula from Spain to better secure their growing control over the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Most of the peninsula was unsettled anyway so it was easy to take, and remains so for some time, though there are trading outposts around the outer edge and St. Augustine (renamed St. James by the Brits) remains the primary town in the peninsula.
