Why is our country known
as “America” as in
the country the “United States of America”? Do you even have a
clue?
Did you believe that
Amerigo Vespucci – Italian explorer, financier, navigator, and
cartographer who traveled to “the New World” in 1499 and 1502 –
actually bestowed that
title, himself, on the new land?
Vespucci, generally
considered to be America's namesake, is known as the first person to
recognize North and South America as distinct continents that were
previously unknown to Europeans, Asians and Africans. However, the
distinction of giving the title of “America” to a place on the
map belongs to a German. Yep, to a German.
In the seventh chapter of
the Cosmographiæ Introduction, a book published written by
Matthias Ringmann in 1507 to accompany Martin Waldseemüller's
printed globe and wall-map, it is explained why the name “America”
was proposed for the then New World, or the Fourth Part of the World:
“And in the sixth
climate toward the Antarctic, the recently discovered farther part of
Africa . . . and a fourth part of the world (which may be called
Amerige, as if meaning "Americus' land", or America)
are situated.”
In 1507, German clergyman
and amateur cartographer called Martin Waldseemüller (1470-1520) and
some other scholars were working an introduction to cosmology that
would contain large maps. He based his drawings of the New World on
Vespucci’s published travelogues. Waldseemüller's work was a map
of the world he called the “Universalis
Cosmographia,” or “Universal
Cosmography.” Comprised of 12 wooden panels, it was eight feet wide
and four-and-a-half feet tall. ”
Waldseemüller proposed
that a portion of Brazil that Vespucci had explored be named
"America," a
feminine Latin form of Vespucci's first name. Then, like now,
countries were commonly referred to as feminine.
Waldseemüller and his two
scholarly partners were aware of Vespucci’s writings and were
ignorant of Columbus’s expeditions. As such, they mistakenly
thought Vespucci was the first to discover this new land and so named
it after him, stating:
“But now these parts
(Europe, Asia and Africa, the three continents of the Ptolemaic
geography) have been extensively explored and a fourth part has been
discovered by Americus Vespuccius (the Latin form of Vespucci’s
name), I do not see what right any one would have to object to
calling this part after Americus, who discovered it and who is a man
of intelligence, and so to name it Amerige, that is, the Land of
Americus, or America: since both Europa and Asia got their names from
women.”
According to
todayifoundout.com (2012), Columbus might have had the new
world named after him, had it not been for two shortcomings. The
first was that Columbus was under the mistaken impression that he had
found a new route to Asia and was not aware that America was an
entirely new continent. The second was that he never wrote publicly
about it so the masses were not aware of his discovery. Had he done
this, Mr. Waldseemüller and his colleagues might have named it
Columba! As it happened, Vespucci did write about it and was the
first to call this land the “Novus Mundus” (Latin for “New
World”).
On Waldseemüller's map,
the unexplored continent of North America is actually called
“Parias," while the newly christened “America”
describes the South American coast all the way down to the
present-day port of Cananéia, just south of São Paulo, Brazil.
Can you imagine the
country being known as the United States of Parias?
At the time it was
believed a strait separated Parias from America, but when it was
later realized they were joined, the two land masses became known as
North and South America.
The name “Parias”
comes from Columbus's account of his Third Voyage (1498-1500) and is
given as the paesi novanemte retrovati – “newly found
countries,” Chapter 105. The account says “the land is of great
extent, but they are not sure if it is an island or terra firma …
by its size, probably terra firma.” Paria was well know to be a
province of the mainland opposite the island of Trinidad, discovered
by Columbus.
The name “America”
stuck. Waldseemüller's maps sold thousands of copies across Europe.
Some reports suggest that Waldseemüller had second thoughts about
the name, but it was too late. In 1538, a mapmaker named Gerardus
Mercator applied the name "America" to both the northern
and southern landmasses of the New World, and the continents have
been known as such ever since.
Some later accused
Vespucci of stealing the honor of the name from Colubus; however,
Vespucci was a friend of Columbus and even tried to help him in his
court battles against the Spanish crown, suing for a percentage of
any profits from the South American colonies. By the time Vespucci
died on February 22, 1512, the continent he had visited was already
known by many as America, despite his suggestions it should be
“Mundus Novus” or New World
Waldseemüller himself was
reluctant to identify America as a continent, and he would never use
the name America in any of his later work. When he finally published
his edition of Ptolemy in Strasbourg in 1513, he labeled South
America “Terra Incognita”. However, nearly every
significant mapmaker for the next quarter of a century relied on his
work, popularizing his geography and terminology.
The wall map was lost for
a long time, but a copy was found in Schloss Wolfegg in southern
Germany by Joseph Fischer in 1901. It is still the only copy known to
survive, and it was purchased by the United States Library of
Congress in May 2003 after an agreement was reached in 2001.
Five copies of the
globular map survive in the form of "gores": printed maps
that were intended to be cut out and pasted onto a wooden globe. Only
one of these lies in the Americas today, residing at the James Ford
Bell Library University of Minnesota; three copies are in Germany
(Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, LMU Munich, Stadtbibliothek Offenburg),
and one is in London, UK, in private hands.
So, it was a German
mapmaker who was responsible for the “America” in the official
title of the country. It could have been the “United States of
Columbusia” or a similar name had more facts been at hand. Since
then more knowledge about origins has surfaced such as the Vikings'
early expeditions to North America around the year 1000 – travels
well documented and accepted as historical fact by most scholars.
There is even a theory
espoused by a small group of scholars and amateur historians led by
Gavin Menzies, a retired British Naval officer, that asserts that a
Muslim-Chinese eunuch-mariner from the Ming Dynasty discovered
America – 71 years before Columbus.
In his book, 1421:
The Year China Discovered America, a theory
that a map that Dr. Hendon Harris found in Taiwan was, in reality, an
ancient Chinese relic illustrating the lost continent of Fu Sang. The
“Harris Map” not only accurately depicted the scale and outline
of the American coast, but it also includes notable features such as
the Grand Canyon. Menzies not only believes that the Chinese had
prior knowledge of America, he believes they had connected with the
native culture of the time.
One thing is certain –
maps, and the tremendous knowledge they impart, are ever-changing
keys not only to understanding the physical features of the world but
also to unlocking the historical mysteries of exploration and
discovery.
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