Do you know when Ecuador's name became Popular?

Ok...  you may be thinking about when Ecuador had 3 presidents in less than a week...  
Or when the Galapagos Island became the greatest center for the Theory of Evolution. 

But, I am actually talking about its name itself...  "Ecuador."..  since at the beginning our countries first name was:  "Viceroyalty of Peru" until 1740.  And then "Viceroyalty of Granada" until 1822.  And then we became part of the "Federation of the Gran Colombia". 

Obviously the equator line passes through Ecuador... but it also goes through Peru and Brazil.  So, why us....  Why did "we" keep it. 

Well, it is very simple....  Something very important happened in 1735 in Ecuador...  Something that by now it is such a "common scientific knowledge" that nobody realize how difficult it was to make it happen.   

That event was the measurement of the earth to prove that the the earth is not an sphere.  It is wider on the middle and it shorter on the poles.  This scientific mission was called the "Geodesic Mission". 

It seems that the French Queen sent two teams to prove the theory.  One was sent to the Pole & the other was sent to the "Viceroyalty of Peru".  

The queen did ask for updates on their discovery...  and since in that time there was no internet or microsoft word... to copy and paste words....  So, everytime the name of the country had to be written, it had say " "Viceroyalty of Peru"....  That is a very long name.  Specially when you repeat it many times through at a letter. 

Remember  FedEX did not exist yet... and "one day delivery" was a dream.
So, the only way to send letters was by ship...  This means...  you better write a lot of info in one letter....  or wait a couple of weeks/month for another ship to go to your desire port.   

Anyway.... making the long story short..., at the end... "Condamine" (the team leader) had  got tired to write the whole name... and he finally started to called it simply "Ecuador".  So, now all Europe knew where Ecuador was... and all the wonderful things about our country.  "Condamine" did not just worked on the theory... he also traveled around the country....

So, he described to his queen all about the Amazon River, the great high lands, the people and the culture....  Also, all the information about the great architecture of the downtown of Quito, and even the discovery of "rubber".  

Then, suddenly all the "old world" knew about Ecuador....  and its name got very popular"...  So, when the "Federation of the Gran Colombia" was divided, the logic name for us to keep was "Ecuador".   

                                                                   ... My Beautiful Ecuador.....
Written by: BCosta