History of the Word America

I have always had a strange fixation on the word America. I think it's beautiful, elegant, short and sweet. So for this article I have decided to reveal the history of this great word.

Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) made two trips to the New World as a navigator and claimed to have discovered it. His published works put forward the idea that it was a new continent, and he was first to call it Novus Mundus "New World."

A map created in 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller was the first to depict this new continent with the name “America,” a Latinized version of “Amerigo.” For more than 350 years the map was housed in a 16th-century castle in Wolfegg, in southern Germany. The introduction to Waldseemüller’s “Cosmographie” actually contains the first suggestion that the area of Columbus’ discovery be named “America” in honor of Vespucci, who recognized that a “New World,” the so-called fourth part of the world, had been reached through Columbus’ voyage. Before that time, there was no name that collectively identified the Western Hemisphere. The earlier Spanish explorers referred to the area as the Indies believing, as did Columbus, that it was a part of eastern Asia.

Amerigo Vespucci, though, never set foot on North America. He traveled through South America only.

There are two continents called North America and South America. There is also Central America and Latin America. These names all reference landmasses of many countries and all are named different and unique names. Only one of which has the name “America” as part of its name, the United States of America.

Well, what a great adventure. We have gone a great way! Back to when our great country was just a name on an experimental map. How far we've come and how far there is left to go. Love and above.