America.
- America.
America.
- America.
America.
Americas.
Americans.
Americanos.
American.
Americano.
A merry-go-round.
Amerigo Vespucci
An Italian.
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The United States of America is a five word country.
States, United, The and Of are all self-explanatory
but the America part makes a lot less sense than you might think.
As we all know, America was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492.
And "discovered" is the right word because there definitely weren't people living there already.
And it was definitely him who discovered it, not the Chinese in 1421
or the Vikings around the year 1000
The China theory is heavily debated.
And it was definitely the United States of America he discovered in 1492
not some Caribbean islands.
Good to be clear.
But although Columbus had reached a new world, he never reached the realisation he'd reached it.
He'd set off out search of an alternative route to the spices of the East Indies
and wrongly thought he'd found one.
And so he named the Caribbean islands 'The West Indies' because he'd sailed west to find them
which is weird because, if he'd thought about it and he had actually gone around the world
and hit the East Indies, he'd have hit them on the east side
so he probably should have called them the East East Indies.
So if he had been right, the West Indies would today be on the eastern side of the Indies
which is ridiculous.
But Columbus wasn't the only European who'd had a 15th century mid-life crisis
that involved buying a massive boat and sailing west until he'd come to terms with his own mortality.
Just one year after Columbus first reached the south American mainland
Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci got there second.
But the crucial difference between Vespucci and Chris, as people in the voyaging business referred to him
is Vespucci did know he'd reached a brand new continent.
And word soon spread of an exciting new world.
Hear ye hear ye!
There's a brand new continent we knew nothing about until now
full of gold and spices and exciting new vegetables!
Map makers around the world set to work creating new and up-to-date world maps
each with their own dreadful renderings of the increasingly but still not very discovered continent.
One of these map-makers was a German called Martin Waldseemüller
who, in 1507, had all but finished his magnificent new world map
except for one small detail... what to name the new continent everyone was talking about.
He very likely would have named it Columbia after the widely-agreed discoverer of the New World, Columbus.
But Amerigo Vespucci had some very clever PR people
who were falsifying documents and spreading lies about exactly when he'd reached the new world.
These lies must have reached the ears of Martin Waldseemüller
You're listening to the Vespucci Hour on Explorer FM.
♫ Amerigo, he got there first.
Because he made the fateful decision to label the new continent "America"
Latin for Amerigo.
Waldseemüller published his map complete with an unnecessarily long Latin title
"Complete Map Following of Ptolemy the Tradition and of Amerigo Vespucci of Others Also the Illustrations"
If you zoom into his map and look carefully
you can see the little word "America" in what we now call modern day Brazil.
It was the first time that made-up word had been used anywhere by anyone ever ever.
Nobody knows why Martin named it after Amerigo's fairly common first name
rather than the Vespucci part.
It's a bit like if I discovered a continent and they named it Markland
instead of the more enticing sounding Cooperworld Jonesania.
One part of the new world that Martin clearly didn't give much thought to
was this bit up here, which he drew super small and super inaccurate.
So it may surprise you to learn the inhabitants of this area were the people who
centuries later cared the most about this map.
Fast forward 500 years to the 90s.
Throughout the 90s, the United States tried desperately to get their hands on Waldseemuller's map.
Because it contained the first use of the word America, the US considered it to be their birth certificate.
Not minding that it had actually been given to a different baby
since they had no qualms about swapping babies even though they were now grown adults.
At the time, Waldseemüller's map was sitting in a drawer in the private collection of
Prince Johannes Zu Waldburg-Wolfegg und Waldsee in Germany.
They wanted it so-o-o-o-o-o-o much
they paid ten million dollars for it
making Waldseemüller's map by far the most expensive map in history.
In 2007, the map finally earned its wrongful place on display in the United States Library of Congress.
How a library was able to raise $10 million, we can only guess.
So how come America got. to name itself America?
You'd think that writing the Latin word "America" on Latin America
would mean America should describe Latin America.
So why is non-Latin USA allowed its A at all?
Part of the reason is that they achieved independence before any of the other 34 American countries.
In 1776, the 13 colonies that had been known as British America
used their rifles to shotgun the name "The United States of America".
Over time, the long name "The United States of America" got shortened to just "America"
which is how the English-speaking world almost exclusively refers to the United States today.
And, as you might expect, or if you're an American, as you might never have given any thought to
this annoys a lot of people.
Whom does it annoy?
First, Latin America.
In the Spanish-speaking world, the word "America" on its own always refers to the entire continent
and never the country, which they call
"Los Estados Unidos"
They even set up a petition, demanding Los Estados stop stealing their name and get a new one right now.
With 308 signatures, it's surely only a matter of time before America concedes.
Second, Canada.
Canadians resent the USA arrogantly naming itself after their shared continent.
But not as much as they resent being mistaken for Americans by people who can't tell their accents apart
and confuse them with people who serve cheese out of a spray can.
Third, British people.
Couldn't they just keep calling it British America?
It had such a nice ring to it
if you're British.
Fourth, Chris Columbus.
If the Americans do insist on naming their continent after a European explorer
Columbus, lest we forget, was actually there before Amerigo Vespucci.
As it is, Columbus had to settle for the US capital, a province of Canada, another country
countless other towns and cities and a national holiday. Poor guy.
And lastly, Amerigo Vespucci himself
who died never knowing these new lands were to bare his name
in so many confusing and overlapping ways.
So, if the United States of Americans did want to change their name
what on earth could they change it to?
Any attempt at a rebrand would come with its own controversy
and of course it's hard to imagine patriotic Americans ever actually voting to be called anything else.
Even though it appears that the US Library of Congress spent $10 million on a map that suggests
its country gave itself the wrong name
It looks like the USA of America will go on calling itself America for many years to come.
Classic America.
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