2007-01-03 20:08:49 · 16 answers · asked by taiiwan 2 in Education & Reference ➔ Trivia
Hmmm... that is quite an intelligent question i came across a long time on yahoo answers... Congratulations buddy!!!
Well... regarding your question why america is called after amerigo vespucci and not after Columbus.... the answer is very simple and it goes across like this.....
Long time back... INDIA was very famous around the world for its spices and condiments... it was also very famous for its cloth and its beautiful girls the fame of which spread across the whole of Europe through China and other Asian countries.... This fame created a flurr in European countries and since Europe was full of adventurous and intelligent sailors..... the race to find India first began in Europe... At that point of time... the route to india was not known by any European traveller.... and that is why the prize of finding India first was high...This made the European travellers more interested in finding the route to India and be the first to gain the fame and money...
Christopher Columbus was a sailor... who was born Italian... but was associated with Spain..... he took up the job of finding India on the map and enrouting it to facilitate trade relations... He set across the continent to find India along with his ship.. and after a long time travellign through the sea... and fighting rough weather and sea... he finally landed..... He was overjoyed as he thought he had finally reached India... and he named the natives he had made as Red indians... due to the colorful feathers they used to wear in their hats.... Thus.... Columbus thought he had reached India whereas he had reached America... and he surely did not know about it... Columbus also did not ever return on his set path.
According to map routes Columbus had set... another sailor Amerigo Vespucci, Italian by birth... set across the oceans to know more about what Columbus had written about his trips.... He wanted to prove that more land (South America) did exist than what had been written about it.... and finally he reached america through his trips to South america....
Thus, though America was discovered by Columbus first... since Amerigo was the first person to formally show that America existed on the world map and depict it in his maps... America has been named after Amerigo Vespucci and not Columbus.
I hope the above mentioned explanation would be good enough.. coz that was the best way i could explain. :)
Best of luck.
Bye.
2007-01-03 21:29:27 · answer #1 · answered by Piyush Bhatnagar 2 · 2⤊ 1⤋
Christopher Columbus was under the impression that he had found a new route to east India (hence naming the native americans 'Indians'). A belief that persisted until he died.
Amerigo Vespucci was the first explorer, after Columbus, to note that the land Columbus had found was not east India, but a entirely new continent.
In 1507 Martin Waldseemüller produced a world globe and a large world map (Universalis Cosmographia) bearing the first use of the name "America".
In 1513 Waldseemüller appears to have had second thoughts about the name, probably due to contemporary protests about Vespucci’s role in the discovery and naming of America. In his reworking of the Ptolemy atlas (written with Ringmann) the continent is labelled simply Terra Incognita (unknown land). Despite the revision, 1,000 copies of the world map had since been distributed, and the original suggestion took hold. While North America was still called Indies in documents for some time, it was eventually called America as well.
2007-01-03 20:40:25 · answer #2 · answered by Squashes 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
America Was Named After
2016-09-30 21:48:26 · answer #3 · answered by mckechnie 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Read a little farther into that text book and you'll find out that Amerigo Vespucci was the first one to draw an accurately describing map.
You may think that it should be named after Christopher Columbus because you think he was first to land here but he wasn't. Leif Erikson was.
2007-01-03 20:13:06 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
Amerigo Vespucci was a mapmaker who signed his maps "Amerigo." When people saw his name on his map of the New World, they assumed it was supposed to be the name of the area.
2007-01-04 07:30:45 · answer #5 · answered by cross-stitch kelly 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Because Columbus didn't make the maps, Vespucci did.
2007-01-04 02:59:04 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
I think Amerigo actually came to the area we now call the U.S. Columbus only made it to the Americas continents)... Central America, I believe.
2007-01-03 20:12:32 · answer #7 · answered by scruffycat 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Except Columbus didn't discover America, Leif Eriksson did. As for that question, PROBABLY because he drew the map as you said.
2016-03-17 23:03:55 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because Amerigo was his map maker and he signed teh maps on that side so when the maps were copied his signature was turned into the name of the new world.
2007-01-04 08:21:49 · answer #9 · answered by JimE 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Because Amerigo Vespucci is a straight up pimp.
2007-01-03 20:11:27 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 5⤋