Naming America — The On-going Debate

Let's step away from politics for a day, and look at one of America's historical curiosities.

North and South America, according to my grade school textbooks, were named after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer who realized that Christopher Columbus had not found India, but a completely new continent.

Oh, if it was only that simple!  New research in the 20th Century has proven conclusively that we don't know who was America's namesake.  We have several contenders – some are better than others, but all are worth close scrutiny.  I present the basics of each claim – all the time wondering if more will surface in years to come!

 
The Italian

 
Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) sailed west from Europe twice, both times as ship's navigator.  In 1503 and 1504 he may have written to Lorenzo de Medici (nephew of the famous "Lorenzo the Magnificent") about his voyages.  Two letters were published under his name:  One, titled New World, claimed Cristoforo Columbo (Cristobal Colon to his Spanish patrons; Christopher Columbus to the English-speaking world) hadn't reached Asia, but a new continent.  The letters also describes sexual customs of the natives, which is probably the reason for their popularity.

 
Here the story begins to be cloudy.  In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller published a map in Introduction to Cosmology listing the new discovery as "America."  Vespucci often followed the custom of Latinizing his first name ("Americus") in formal correspondence.  Did Waldseemüller translate that to "America" (the feminine form, following the example of Asia and Africa) and apply it to the New World?  Conventional wisdom says yes.

 
It is now believed his baptismal name was "Amerigho" — an old Gothic name still common in English as the surname Merrick or the female name Emily.  He was a friend of Colombo and held a royal appointment as chief navigator for the West Indies.  According to Introduction to Cosmology, "I do not see what right any one would have to object to calling this part after Americus, who discovered it and who is a man of intelligence, Amerige, that is, the Land of Americus, or America: since both Europa and Asia got their names from women."  This suggests Vespucci wasn't even involved with the naming; it was done by others in his honor but without his knowledge.  By the way, what Waldseemüller's map labels "America" is actually modern Brazil, the land Vespucci explored.  It was Gerard Mercator's 1538 Map of the World, which gave the name to both continents.

 
However, it isn't known with certainty that Vespucci wrote those letters.  The first letter describes two trips and the second describes four plus a book by Vespucci, The Four Voyages, which was never published and no manuscript has ever been known.  Some scholars also believe that, if Vespucci did give his name to the land masses, he would have called it "Vespuccia" or "Vespucca."  The naming convention of discovery was well-established long before this time period — when naming places after royalty, use the given name; when naming after commoners, use the surname.  Vespucci was certainly no royal.

The Englishman

 
Bristol, England, celebrates an adopted son, Welshman Richard Ameryk (also spelled Amerycke in English and Ap Meryke in Welsh) as the namesake of the New World.  This is an interesting possibility because the claim spans almost two decades and includes two distinct expeditions.

Conventional wisdom says Giovanni Caboto (called "John Cabot" by his English patrons) first visited North America in 1497, half a decade after Colombo, and the British based their claims on Canada from this date.  But Englishmen may have landed in North America much earlier, because of simple economics.  Fish was a mainstay of the Bristol economy and merchants bought salted cod in Iceland (which is west of England) until the King of Denmark shut down the market in 1475.  Four years later, Bristol merchants received a royal charter to find source of fish for trade that they could control.  One of these was Richard Ameryk.  It was simple logic that their expedition should head west, a direction in which they knew a source to be located.  Records of their business (found in 1960) state that Ameryk shipped salt to the fishing party to preserve their catch for transport to England.  Their base of operation was probably modern Newfoundland, whose waters, it is known with certainty, have been fished since the early 1500s.  Historian Rodney Broome recently wrote, "I believe the Bristol sailors named the area after the Bristol merchant they worked for." [1]

 
Years later, Caboto sailed west from England because he was sure the continents would be closer together in the northern waters.  He chose Bristol, then England's second largest seaport, as his jumping off point.  It is certain that Richard Ameryk, who had risen to be Collector of Customs at the Port of Bristol, knew of Caboto's expeditions and may have been part of the planning.  His earlier enterprise was evidence that Hy-Brasil, an Atlantic island named in Celtic legends was, in fact, no legend. [2] Caboto, perhaps with Ameryk's help, mounted three expeditions, at least one was highly successful — records of the first are sketchy, records of the third are lost.  Caboto was so successful that he received a handsome pension from King Henry VII, which was dispersed through his customs officer, our old friend, Richard Ameryk.  It is no stretch to suggest the northern lands were named by Caboto in honor of his benefactor, or that he simply continued using a name he'd heard among local sailors.  Caboto, by the way, also assumed this new land was an Asian island.

 
If the name "America" or some variant was known in England at this time, a half-decade before Vespucci's letters were published and a full decade before Waldseemüller's map, it is certain the new land could not have been named for the Italian.

 
The Carib Natives

 
In the late 19th Century, the tables turned when a Frenchman claimed "America" wasn't given to the Americas, but taken from them.  Geologist Jules Marcou, in the Smithsonian Institute 1888 Annual Report, describes a tribe and mountain range called "Amerrique."  Marcou suggests that this district was known to and visited by Colombo and Vespucci and, because of its rich gold deposits, the name became synonymous with gold.

 
Marcou goes on to quote sources stating that "America" was the popular name for the New World by 1515, which he says would have been impossible if Waldseemüller and Mercator were the only sources.  He believes the names would have passed far more rapidly by word of mouth among the sailors and tradesmen who serviced them, than among the literati who had little access to the expensive maps which had what we would today call a very small press run.

 
The Scandinavians

 
Here, it gets really interesting:  The Icelandic history, Saga of Eric the Red, describes how Leif Ericsson voyaged to a place he called "Vinland."   Long thought legendary, the arrival was confirmed by the 1960 discovery of the only known Norse settlement on the North America continent, a place now called L'Anse aux Meadows on the island of Newfoundland.

 
The Saga was first committed to parchment over 250 years after Ericsson's voyages, and not generally known among European historians until the 1700s.  Still, it became and remained a popular notion, even before proof existed.  It also gave rise to a 1930s idea that "America" is of Scandinavian origin: Amt plus Eric formed Amteric (Norse, "Land of Eric").  It should surprise no one that Leif would name his discovery after the father who discovered Greenland and inspired the son's explorations.

 
The Vinland settlements were short-lived, because of unfriendly natives, and even Greenland was abandoned as the climate cooled over succeeding centuries.  Still, the settlements were real, and advocates of the Norse connection claim that North Atlantic sailors, as early as the beginning of the 11th Century, called Vinland Ommerike (oh-MEH-ric-eh), Old Norse, "farthest outland").  However, there is no proven historical record of this name outside Scandinavia until centuries after the name "America" was firmly in place.

 
The Conclusion

 
None is possible under the present circumstances.  Research will continue and, if records are still extant, perhaps proof will yet come that the name had a specific origin and its travels to the cartographers' print shop will someday be mapped.

 
The oddest possible answer is that North and South America were actually named for all of the above.  Could it be coincidental that Newfoundland was named twice — for Richard Ameryk and for Eric the Red, while Central America was named for the Amerrique tribe and Brazil was mistakenly given a name thought to be based on Amerigo Vespucci?

If so, we have put to rest finally the notion that God has no sense of humor, for this could be the ultimate in Divine practical jokes.

Thanks for listening, tune in next week for another rant.

[1] Broome, Rodney, Terra Incognita: The True Story of How America Got Its Name, 2001.
[2] The name had nothing to do with the South American nation, it was the Anglicized form of Uí Breasail (Irish Gaelic, "descendants/clan of Breasal") an ancient tribe of northeastern Ireland.