Amerigo's Land: How America Got Its Name

 

Amerigo Vespucci (Scribner's Magazine. June 1876)

Naming a continent is a funny thing.

One man is the acknowledged discoverer of a new world, yet it gets named after another by pure chance.

History tells us Martin Waldseemüller, a German cartographer, scribbled America over Brazil on a new map he made in 1507. He’d read Vespucci’s account of his discoveries and decided it was a good way to honor the navigator and discoverer of that area.

“I see no reason,” said Waldseemüller, “why anyone should justly object to calling this part America, after Amerigo [Vespucci] its discoverer, a man of great ability.”

Over time, the name stuck.

In 1538, the famed mapmaker Gerardus Mercator extended the name to North and South America. Amerigo Vespucci’s Novus Mundo, or the new world, would bear his name from then on.

Amerigo Vespucci was born in Florence, Italy, on March 9, 1454. As a young man, he clerked for Lorenzo de’ Medici. In 1492, he was dispatched to Cadiz, Spain, to serve as an agent in that branch, and in 1495, Vespucci procured supplies for Columbus’s second voyage.

Vespucci switched allegiances in 1499 and began work for the King of Portugal. He took part in several voyages of discovery. Some say he acted as an observer for the king; others contend he navigated several expeditions. Whichever version is accurate, Vespucci was present on several extraordinary voyages of discovery.

The voyage of 1501-1502 was the most important because it convinced Vespucci it was a “new world” he had visited—not Asia. And that is one of the critical differences between Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci. Columbus always believed he had reached the Indies. Amerigo Vespucci took a leap of faith and determined he’d reached a new continent unknown in Ptolemaic geography.

Amerigo vespucci wrote Mundus Novus, his account of the discovery of the New World.
(Scribner's Magazine. June 1876)

The second difference between Amerigo Vespucci and Christopher Columbus is that Vespucci penned letters and books detailing his travels. Vespucci proclaimed he discovered a new world, which he named Mundus Novus.

Vespucci wrote, “I have found a continent more densely peopled and abounding in animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa, and, in addition, a climate milder and more delightful than in any other region known to us...We knew that land to be a continent and not an island both because it stretches forth in the form of a very long and unbending coast and because it is replete with infinite inhabitants.”

His descriptions of the natives he encountered detailed their marriage customs, sex lives, eating habits, and daily activities. “They eat little flesh except human flesh,” said Vespucci. “They are so inhuman that they outdo every custom (even) of beasts; for they eat all their enemies whom they kill or capture.”

Many historians insist Vespucci’s letters and books were fabricated or written by others. Still, Vespucci’s books were the talk of Europe. They sold better than the works of Columbus and were much more accessible.

Mundus Novus, or the New World, became Amerigo’s land, or America.

And that’s the story of how America got its name.

Of course, there is a conflicting claim.

John Cabot explaining his discoveried to King Henry VII. 
(Weare, G.E. Cabot's Discovery of North America. 1893)

Alfred Hudd, an amateur historian, presented a theory in 1908 that John Cabot was the first explorer to reach North America. Hudd said Cabot sailed past Iceland in 1497. He searched for new fishing grounds for Bristol merchants shut out of the Icelandic fishing trade since 1475, when the King of Iceland banned foreign fishers from fishing in his country’s waters.

According to Hudd, John Cabot sailed to Newfoundland in 1497 on the ship Matthew, provided by his patron Richard Amerike (aka Ameryk).

On that voyage, Cabot mapped the coastline between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. And, by custom, he further assumed Cabot would have named the newfound land after his patron. Thus, Amerike or Ameryk got twisted into America, and he is the actual namesake of America, not Amerigo Vespucci.

The only evidence Hudd presented to support his theory was a passing glance at a lost manuscript he’d seen years before, an early calendar of local events. Supposedly it recorded that on June 24, 1497, “the land of America was found by merchants of Bristol” in the Bristol ship, Matthew.

The only problem is that the evidence got destroyed in a subsequent fire.

That theory received a new breath of life in 2006 when The Book of General Ignorance was published. Like Hudd’s book, the authors claim Cabot mapped the shorelines between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in 1497, ten years before Martin Waldseemüller published his map and four years before Amerigo Vespucci voyaged to the New World.

Again, there’s no proof the new land was called America, just the theory that John Cabot would have named any discoveries after his patron.

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