this thought occurred to me a while back. i forget the source, but i seem to remember reading that, when Columbus first reached the Americas, he thought that it was both Asia and that the Earthly Paradise was somewhere nearby, and believed that to the day he died, and at least one map of the time gives this as a name of North America, as "Parias". ignoring the controversies about Columbus himself, what does everyone think about the plausibility and possible consequences of the name sticking to the effect that, for example, the Caribbean is known as the "Paradise Sea"?