<P> After the de Soto expedition in 1540, Spanish cartographers began to apply the name of the tribe to the mountains themselves . The first cartographic appearance of Apalchen is on Diego Gutierrez's map of 1562; the first use for the mountain range is the map of Jacques le Moyne de Morgues in 1565 . </P> <P> The name was not commonly used for the whole mountain range until the late 19th century . A competing and often more popular name was the "Allegheny Mountains", "Alleghenies", and even "Alleghania". In the early 19th century, Washington Irving proposed renaming the United States either Appalachia or Alleghania . </P> <P> In U.S. dialects in the southern regions of the Appalachians, the word is pronounced / ˌæpəˈlætʃɪnz /, with the third syllable sounding like "latch". In northern parts of the mountain range, it is pronounced / ˌæpəˈleɪtʃɪnz / or / ˌæpəˈleɪʃɪnz /; the third syllable is like "lay", and the fourth "chins" or "shins". There is often great debate between the residents of the regions as to which pronunciation is the more correct one . Elsewhere, a commonly accepted pronunciation for the adjective Appalachian is / ˌæpəˈlætʃiən /, with the last two syllables "- ian" pronounced as in the word "Romanian". </P> <P> The whole system may be divided into three great sections: </P>

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