America (name)

The naming of the Americas, or America occurred shortly after Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas in 1492. It is generally accepted that the name derives from Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer, who explored the new continents in the following years. However, some have suggested other explanations, such as the theory that it was named after Richard Amerike of Bristol.

In modern English, North and South America are generally considered separate continents, and taken together are called the Americas in the plural, parallel to similar situations such as the Carolinas. When conceived as a unitary continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a clarifying context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America.

The earliest known use of the name America dates to April 25, 1507, where it was applied to what is now known as South America. It appears on a small globe map with twelve time zones, together with the largest wall map made to date, both created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in France. These were the first maps to show the Americas as a land mass separate from Asia. An accompanying book, Cosmographiae Introductio, anonymous but apparently written by Waldseemüller's collaborator Matthias Ringmann, states, "I do not see what right any one would have to object to calling this part [that is, the South American mainland], after Americus who discovered it and who is a man of intelligence, Amerigen, that is, the Land of Americus, or America: since both Europa and Asia got their names from women".

Americus Vesputius was the Latinized version of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci's name, the forename being an old Italianization (compare modern Italian Enrico) of Medieval Latin Emericus (see Saint Emeric of Hungary), from the Germanic forenames Amalric and Emmerich (however, the Old High German name Haimirich may also be a source), from Proto-Germanic *amal (“vigor, bravery”) or *heim ("home") + *rik (“ruler”).

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