Often when one mentions America we think America pertaining to the United States.?

Question

In that case, why are all the continents in the Western Hemisphere named by Amerigo de whatever his name is? - example, north america, south america, central america and latin america.

Answer 1

These are all Americas; you are right. We are the United States of America, and the only country in the Americas to have the word in it's name. But, truly, all Americans are people that live in or were citizens of the Western Hemisphere. Most people are ignorant about this.

Answer 2

The entire world recognizes the word "America" as meaning the United States of America. That's just the way it is.

To add onto the Amerigo thingy, the Founding Fathers considered calling the new country "Columbania" or "Columbana" after Columbus. But they rejected those names as sounding REALLY whack. I agree with them.

If the name "Vespuccia" was indeed ever considered, I suppose it would have been rejected on similar aesthetic grounds, namely that it would have sounded stupid.

Fact is, the American colonists were being referred to as "Americans" quite some time before the American Revolution. So the name stuck, and it is what it is. So get over it. I am an American. Got a problem wit dat?

[SIDEBAR: The people living here before the discovery of the Americas are called "Meso-Americans."]

Love, Jack.

PS Sheepherder you are so right! "If ya can't run with the big dawgs, stay on the damn porch!"

Answer 3

The earliest known use of the name America for this particular landmass dates from 1507. It appears on a globe and a large map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges. An accompanying book, Cosmographiae Introductio, explains that the name was derived from the Latinized version of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci's name, Americus Vespucius, in its feminine form, America, as the other continents all have Latin feminine names.

Vespucci's role in the naming issue, like his exploratory activity, is unclear and most probably a tale. Some sources say that he was unaware of the widespread use of his name to refer to the new landmass. Others hold that he promulgated a story that he had made a secret voyage westward and sighted land in 1491, a year before Columbus. If he did indeed make such claims, they backfired, and only served to prolong the ongoing debate on whether the "Indies" were really a new land, or just an extension of Asia.

However, as Dr. Basil Cottle (Author, Dictionary of Surnames, 1967) points out, new countries or continents are never named after a person's first name, always after their second name (with the exception of some places named after the first names of monarchs or princes, such as Carolina). Thus, America should really have become Vespucci Land or Vespuccia if the Italian explorer really gave his name to the continent. Christopher Columbus, who had first brought the region's existence to the attention of Renaissance era voyagers, had died in 1506 (believing, to the end, that he'd discovered and colonized part of India) and could not protest Waldseemüller's decision.


A few alternative theories regarding the landmass' naming have been proposed, but none of them has achieved any widespread acceptance.

Answer 4

"Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454 - February 22, 1512) was an Italian merchant and cartographer who voyaged to and wrote about the Americas. His exploratory journeys along the eastern coastline of South America convinced him that a new continent had been discovered, a bold contention in his day when many thought the seafaring trailblazers setting out from European docks were traveling to East Asia and South Asia."
...
"It was the publication and widespread circulation of his letters that led Martin Waldseemüller to name the new continent America on his world map of 1507 in Lorraine. Vespucci styled himself Americus Vespucius in his Latin writings, so Waldseemüller based the new name on the Latin form of Vespucci's first name, taking the feminine form America." (Wikipedia)

I saw a program recently on the History Channel (I think it was) to the effect that Amerigus Vespucci was honored for discovering the land mass of the new world by the mapmaker who designated the new continents as "America" in honor of him. By the time the map maker changed his mind and removed the name "America", it was too late --- all the seamen (and those who had read Vespucci's letters) knew the new continents as the Americas and the name stuck.

I think personally since the "USA" which stands for the "United States of America" is the only nation to have "America" as part of its official name, it gets shortened to "America". Plus citizens of the USA call themselves "Americans", so I guess everyone else does also.

Answer 5

All those continents were not discovered by anyone before Amerigo did. At first they were called the New World, or something. Then they renamed it to America, after Amerigo Vespucci.

And at that time I dont think they really cared about North or South America, the whole place was new to them.

Answer 6

we think that way because for now we are the biggest, baddest boys on the block!