Why is America so named? What is the origin of the word?

Answer 1

America was named after Amerigo Vespucci; however it was given it's name by cartographer Martin Waldseemueller in 1507. Why he named the New World (actually, just South America) America rather than Vespucciland--is easy to see. Amerigo's first name was a lot more euphonious than his last name and could be latinized into a word that started and ended with the letter A, just like Asia and Africa before it. Also, Vespucci was one of those people known in his own lifetime mostly by his first.

(As a caveat; the reasons the inhabitants of the USA are commonly known as "Americans" despite the size of the continent and the existence of several countries, is because firstly, the natives of the New World were coined "Americans" by the Europeans and then, when Europeans began settling the New World, they adopted the same term for themselves and their progeny. In most legal circles, the term "United States Citizen" is used; however, "American" still remains the popular term.)

Answer 2

America Word Origin

Answer 3

Origin Of The Word America

Answer 4

The earliest known use of the name America is from 1507, when a globe and a large map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint-Die-des-Vosges described the combined continents of North and South America. Although the origin of the name is uncertain, the most widely held belief is that expressed in an accompanying book, Cosmographiae Introductio, which explains it as a feminized version of the Latin name of Italian explorer AMERIGO VESPUCCI (Americus Vespucius); in Latin, the other continents' names were all feminine. Vespucci theorized, correctly, that Christopher Columbus, on reaching islands in the Caribbean Sea in 1492, had come not to India but to a "New World".

Answer 5

Americo Vespucci (March 9, 1451 - February 22, 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and cartographer. He played a senior role in two voyages which explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502. On the second of these voyages he discovered that South America extended much further south than previously known by Europeans. This convinced him that this land was part of a new continent, a bold contention at a time when other European explorers crossing the Atlantic Ocean thought they were reaching Asia.
Statue at the Uffizi, Florence
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Statue at the Uffizi, Florence

Vespucci's voyages became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to him were published between 1502 and 1504.[1] In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent "America" after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo. In an accompanying book, Waldseemüller published one of the Vespucci accounts, which led to criticisms of Vespucci as trying to usurp Christopher Columbus's glory. However, the rediscovery in the 18th century of other letters by Vespucci has led to the view that the early published accounts were fabrications, not by Vespucci, but by others.

Answer 6

Named after Amerigo Vespucci

Answer 7

America is named after the Italian explorer
Amerigo Vespucci.

Answer 8

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The earliest known use of the name America for this particular landmass dates from April 25, 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. 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. 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. One alternative, first advanced by Jules Marcou in 1875 and later recounted by novelist Jan Carew, is that the name America derives from the district of Amerrique in Nicaragua. The gold-rich district of Amerrique was purportedly visited by both Vespucci and Columbus, for whom the name became synonymous with gold. According to Marcou, Vespucci later applied the name to the New World, and even changed the spelling of his own name from Alberigo to Amerigo to reflect the importance of the discovery. Another theory, first proposed by a Bristol antiquary and naturalist, Alfred Hudd, in 1908 was that America is derived from Richard Amerike, a merchant from Bristol, who is believed to have financed John Cabot's voyage of discovery from England to Newfoundland in 1497 as found in some documents from Westminster Abbey a few decades ago. Supposedly, Bristol fishermen had been visiting the coast of North America for at least a century before Columbus' voyage and Waldseemüller's maps are alleged to incorporate information from the early English journeys to North America. The theory holds that a variant of Amerike's name appeared on an early English map (of which however no copies survive) and that this was the true inspiration for Waldseemüller.

Answer 9

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Answer 10

There are conflicting theories about the origin of the name, and nobody knows for sure, even though it's generally credited to the explorer who discovered the mainland of the new world, Amerigo Vespucci.