America
There are two competing theories for the naming of America.
The first is that the continent was named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (who styled himself Americus Vespucius in Latin), who, following his four voyages to the Americas, first developed the idea that the newly discovered western lands were in fact a continent. In recognition thereof, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller named the new continent after Vespucci's first name. Amerigo Vespucci was named after Saint Emeric of Hungary. (See also Naming of America.) The English name corresponding to Emeric is Henry.
One antique map shows the continent labelled "North America or Mexicana" and "South America or Peruana".
An alternative theory was proposed by the local Bristol antiquarian Alfred Hudd first proposed the theory that the word America had evolved from Amerike or ap Meryk, based on a lost manuscript which he claimed to have seen. Alfred Hudd was an aristocrat who belonged to the Clifton Antiquarian Club of Bristol, founded in 1884 to arrange meetings and excursions for the study of objects of archaeological interest in the West of England and South Wales. He also collected butterflies, was a naturalist and member of the Bristol Naturalists' Society.
Hudd proposed that the word "America" was originally applied to a destination across the western ocean, possibly an island or a fishing station in Newfoundland. After the king of Iceland had cut off trade for fish, England sent out expeditions to find new sources. Hudd suggested Amerike's sponsorship made his name known in Bristol in association with the North American destinations prior to other mapmaking or voyages. The writer Jonathan Cohen noted he made a conjectural leap to reach that conclusion, and no extant evidence supports it. In the 21st century, the scholar John Davies briefly mentioned the story as a kind of Welsh patriot piece.
However, the traditionally accepted person attributed to the naming is Amerigo Vespucci, although few facts exist to support this theory.
Read more about this topic: List Of Continent Name Etymologies
Famous quotes containing the word america:
“Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake ... but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one’s own rules.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“To-day there is hardly a woman of intelligence in all America ... who is not definitely and actively concerned in some social interest, who does not recognize some duty besides those incident to her own blood relationship.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)