As it turns out, America this nation of notorious hucksters, dreamers and spin doctors was named for just the right guy. The continent that was supposedly discovered by Christopher Columbus is named for a decidedly second-rate Johnny-come-lately of an explorer named Amerigo Vespucci. It was in 1507, with the publication of a large cut-out map suitable for creating a do-it-yourself globe, that Vespuccis first name, if not Vespucci himself, achieved lasting renown. On this map, published in the intellectual backwater of St. Di in Lorraine, the designation America (the feminine of Amerigo) was chosen for the portion of the hemisphere where Vespucci claimed to have landed during his second voyage. In 1538, the noted mapmaker Mercator, apparently referring to the earlier map from St. Di, chose to use the name America to mark not just the southern but also the northern portion of the continent. The rest, as they say, is history. The tradition was secure, Fernndez-Armesto writes, the decision irreversible. And so, because of Mercator and assorted others, more than 350 million of us now call ourselves Americans.
As Fernndez-Armesto astutely observes, its probably a good thing Mercator went with America instead of what might have been the more obvious choice, Christopheria or, say, Columbia. Columbus has such an ineluctable presence in history, he writes, that a hemisphere named after him would never be free of association with him. With every vocalization, images of imperialism, evangelization, colonization, massacre and ecological exchange would spring to mind. The controversies would be constant, the revulsion unendurable. Since Amerigo Vespucci is a historical nonentity, the term America is free of the disturbing connotations that would have been associated with his more famous forebear. History has made him irrelevant, Fernndez-Armesto writes, to the major resonances of his own name. Thanks to the ephemerality of Amerigo Vespuccis reputation as an explorer, America was given an enduring name.
www.nytimes.com/2007/08/1...ref=slogin
As Fernndez-Armesto astutely observes, its probably a good thing Mercator went with America instead of what might have been the more obvious choice, Christopheria or, say, Columbia. Columbus has such an ineluctable presence in history, he writes, that a hemisphere named after him would never be free of association with him. With every vocalization, images of imperialism, evangelization, colonization, massacre and ecological exchange would spring to mind. The controversies would be constant, the revulsion unendurable. Since Amerigo Vespucci is a historical nonentity, the term America is free of the disturbing connotations that would have been associated with his more famous forebear. History has made him irrelevant, Fernndez-Armesto writes, to the major resonances of his own name. Thanks to the ephemerality of Amerigo Vespuccis reputation as an explorer, America was given an enduring name.
www.nytimes.com/2007/08/1...ref=slogin
