Amerika? How a German Named "America"

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.