America • The Americas • American: What’s in a Name?

How did the American continent (Erdteil in German, “earth part”) get its name? America, considered one continent or a “double continent,” was the fourth one to be discovered by Europeans. When (in 1606) they found the fifth, Australia, they made the same mistake they had made with America, thinking it was part of Asia, not a separate continent.

Today it is common to speak of seven continents, but not all geographers agree on that number. Depending on how you define an Erdteil, the count ranges from four to seven. For instance, some consider Europe and Asia to be a single continent named Eurasia. A similar dispute existed for North and South America. Europeans long viewed America as a single continent, but today we refer to “the Americas” – as two separate continents.

Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map (detail shown here) consisted of 12 panels, one of which depicted the part of South America that is now Brazil, labeled “America,” honoring Amerigo Vespucci. It was the first time the new continent had a name. Soon other mapmakers used the new name. Learn more below. PHOTO: Library of Congress (Wikimedia Commons)

Like any historical tale, the story of the naming of America has a cast of characters. Three Catholic men are the main characters, if not the only ones, in the story of how the New World, a new continent, got its name.

1. Christopher Columbus

It all began with a Genovese sailor and explorer named Cristoforo Colombo, known in English as Christopher Columbus.

In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Almost everyone knows those lines from what is sometimes called the “Columbus Day Poem.” But very few know the rest of the verses, which include these lines:

“Indians! Indians!” Columbus cried;
His heart was filled with joyful pride.

But “India” the land was not;
It was the Bahamas, and it was hot.*

Yes, Columbus landed in the Bahamas, but he thought he was in India. He died without realizing he had discovered a new continent. And in that he wasn’t alone. Although in Columbus’s time, educated Europeans had long known that the world was a sphere, once they headed for terra incognita they had a hard time figuring out where they actually were on the globe. An entirely new and unknown continent was a bit much to take in.

*After these lines the poem strays from historical accuracy with verses like these: “The Arakawa natives were very nice / They gave the sailors food and spice.” In fact, Columbus considered the natives naive and barbaric, and he killed and enslaved many of them during his four voyages.

2. Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci was a contemporary of Columbus. Two Italians you may think. But no, there was no Italy before 1861. Columbus, born in 1451, was a Genovese from the Republic of Genoa. Vespucci, born in 1454, was a Florentine from the Republic of Florence. And neither one stayed in his hometown or homeland.

It was Vespucci who actually sailed to what we now call Brazil and (probably) figured out that not only was it not India or the Asian continent, it was indeed a land mass previously unknown to Europeans. (That was not established for certain until 1513, when the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa became the first European to view the Pacific Ocean from the American continent on the Isthmus of Panama.) But it was not Amerigo Vespucci who christened the new continent with his own given name. In fact he died without knowing the new continent had been given his name. That was done by a German mapmaker.

3. Martin Waldseemüller

The German (Alemannic) cartographer Martin Waldseemüller was born around 1470 in the town of Wolfenweiler (now part of Schallstadt, just south of Freiburg im Breisgau). During his lifetime, Freiburg, the Breisgau, and Baden were under Habsburg rule, and the Habsburg Archduke Albrecht founded the university in Freiburg in 1457, where Waldseemüller later studied.

Working with another German from Alsace, it was Waldseemüller who was first inspired to honor Vespucci by placing the name “America” on a world map that was published in 1507. Although a thousand copies of Cosmographiae Introductio (“Introduction to Cosmography”) were printed, only a single copy of the Latin-language document is known to exist today. It is now held by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., which purchased the book and its maps in 2001.

That’s the short version of how America got its name. Now let’s get into a bit more detail about that interesting story – and also discuss how the terms “America” and “American” are used today.

Columbus Wasn’t First

Despite the myths, Columbus was not the first European to discover America. And in fact he discovered the Bahamas. Columbus never set foot on the American mainland until his fourth and last voyage (1502–1504), and that was in Central America, not North America. Still geographically confused following his three previous voyages, Columbus was ostensibly trying to find the Strait of Malacca (in Indonesia, linking the Pacific and Indian) to gain access to the Indian Ocean. On 14 August 1502, he landed on the continental mainland near what is today Trujillo, Honduras, still unaware that he was on a new and undiscovered continent, the so-called “fourth part of the world.” It was very difficult for Europeans in that age to imagine that there was a huge, unknown continent out there.

Two European men, the Norsemen Erik the Red and his son Leif Erikson, beat Columbus by about 500 years (Greenland and Vinland). But of course, America was first discovered and populated by Asians via Beringia, taking many centuries to spread across the Americas from the north. They were truly the first Americans.

Even though Christopher Columbus was not the first, and he had no clue about the true location of the new lands he had discovered, he gets the credit because, unlike the Vikings, Columbus happened to make his discovery at a time when it was possible and desirable for the Europeans to establish a presence in that new world. As author Martin Dugard puts it, “Columbus’s claim to fame isn’t that he got there first, it’s that he stayed.”**

Much to his credit, Cristóbal Colón (his name in the language of Spain, his financial backers) was an excellent navigator and sailor who knew how use the prevailing winds in the vast Atlantic Ocean to help speed up his small fleet of three rather tiny ships to what he thought was part of Asia. With his four voyages, Columbus alone established a virtual shuttle service between Europe and the New World. (See the map below.) But he didn’t really know it was new, or where he truly was when he got there.

This map shows the routes of Columbus’s four voyages between 1492 and 1502. On his fourth and last trip (orange) he missed an opportunity to beat Balboa in sighting the Pacific Ocean from the Isthmus of Panama, thus confirming that America was indeed a new continent. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

While Columbus was a great navigator, he was a horrible manager and leader. His European attitude led him to view the natives as barbarians and candidates for slavery. His first settlement collapsed and perished. Later his governance in Hispaniola was characterized by abuse, torture and mutilation – which ended with him and his brothers being brought back to Spain in chains. The Spanish Crown stripped him of his noble titles, but amazingly allowed him a fourth voyage. Columbus was banned from any more governing in the lands he had discovered. And even after three previous trips, he still did not know where that really was. But a fellow navigator also working for Spain (and Portugal) at the time may have had a clearer grasp of where he was on the globe.

Amerigo Vespucci’s Voyages

Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) was born three years after Columbus in a different part of what is now Italy. He would also become a seafarer and explorer, but even less is known about his life than that of Columbus. Like Columbus, Vespucci left his hometown, the city-state of Florence, and settled in Seville in the Kingdom of Castile by 1492, the same year Columbus set sail on “the ocean blue.” Why Vespucci went to Seville is not certain, but he had been conducting business there for the influential Medici family. He soon married a Spanish woman, Maria Cerezo. By Spanish royal decree he was made a citizen of Castile.

A portrait of Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci in a turban, from a print by the Dutch publisher and engraver Crispijn van de Passe the Elder (1564–1637). The Latin words surrounding the portrait state (a bit inaccurately): “Amerigo Vespucci (Americus Vesputius), from Florence, discoverer and conqueror of the land of Brazil.” The print, dated circa 1590-1637, is in the British Museum in London. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

Between 1497 and 1502, Vespucci participated in at least two voyages of discovery, the first funded by Spain, the second funded by Portugal. Not all historians agree, but out of Vespucci’s four claimed voyages, at least two are better documented and more certain than the others. His role on board is also uncertain, but he has been documented as a “pilot” on at least one voyage.

The intention of the so-called “Second voyage” (1499–1500, Spanish-sponsored) was to follow up on the discoveries Columbus had made during his third voyage. An armada of four ships, with Alonso de Ojeda as fleet commander, left Spain in May 1499 and after reaching present-day South America, the fleet split into two pairs, with the ones Vespucci was aboard sailing south along the coast of what is now Brazil past the mouth of the Amazon. On the return trip, Vespucci’s ships made a stop in the Bahamas to conduct a slave raid, returning to Spain with 232 natives.

The “Third voyage” (1503-1504) for Manuel I of Portugal was to further investigate the South American land mass. The king wanted to determine where the land lay in relation to a line established by the Treaty of Tordesillas. Any land to the east of that line could be claimed by Portugal (later Brazil). Three ships left Lisbon in May 1501 with Vespucci serving as pilot under the command of Gonçalo Coelho. Vespucci’s account describes an encounter with a hostile band of natives who killed and ate one of the crewmen – before the expedition went on to discover a large bay they named Rio de Janeiro because it was sighted on 1 January 1502.

Back in Seville, now enjoying a burnished reputation as an explorer and navigator, Vespucci continued to serve the Spanish crown. In 1508 he was appointed chief navigator for Spain’s Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) which served as a central trading house for Spain’s overseas possessions. In his new post, Vespucci was responsible for ensuring that ships’ pilots were adequately trained and licensed before sailing to the New World.

Waldseemüller and the 1505 Soderini Letter

The authenticity of the Soderini Letter has been debated ever since it first appeared in print. It was this document, supposedly written by Amerigo Vespucci himself, that came to the attention of Martin Waldseemüller and the scholarly group he was working with in Lorraine in the early 1500s.

Martin Waldseemüller (c. 1470-1520) was a student at the university in Freiburg in the early 1490s. He became an ordained priest in Basel, Switzerland, where he gained experience in printing and engraving. Because of his reputation as a cartographer, in 1500 he was invited to join a group of scholars in Saint-Dié (now in France, then part of Lorraine) that originally intended to publish a new edition of Ptolemy’s Geography. Around the same time, the Alsatian scholar Matthias Ringmann (1482-1511) was also brought into the group because of his previous work with the Geography and his knowledge of Greek and Latin. Ringmann and Waldseemüller soon became friends and collaborators. The group called themselves the Gymnasium Vosagense, named for the Vosges Mountains in that region, also seen in the full name of the town: Saint-Dié-des-Vosges.

The cover of Cosmographiae Introductio, the 1507 booklet, written in Latin by Matthias Ringmann, was printed to accompany Waldseemüller’s map and globe. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

In 1506 the Gymnasium obtained a French translation (from the original Italian) of the Soderini Letter, a printed booklet, dated 1505, and attributed to Amerigo Vespucci, that provided an account of Vespucci’s voyages in a letter to Gonfaloniere Piero Soderini (hence the name of the letter/booklet). The Soderini Letter was translated into French and Latin in the 1500s, resulting in various translation errors. (An English translation dates from 1916.) There is even debate over the language used in the original: Spanish or Italian. Some historians claim Vespucci’s reputation has suffered because of these errors.

Regardless, whether one accepts the Soderini Letter as being originally written by Vespucci or someone else, it is responsible for Amerigo Vespucci getting credit for recognizing America as a new continent, and for inspiring Waldseemüller to use a Latin form of his first name to label what is now Brazil as America on his 1507 map.

A later 1513 map by Waldseemüller omitted the “America” label, and there was some controversy about how Vespucci had usurped Columbus’s claim to fame. It was also not clear if the mapmaker intended the new label to designate just the region of Brazil or the entire South American continent. Nevertheless, America soon appeared on maps by other cartographers, notably maps by Gerardus Mercator (Geert Kremer, 1512-1594). In 1538 Mercator labeled both the North and South continents “America” on his world map (Orbis Imago). The “America” name has been used ever since.

In April 1507 the Gymnasium group published Waldseemüller’s 12-panel wall map, along with an explanatory book entitled Cosmographiae Introductio (Introduction to Cosmography, written by Matthias Ringmann), and a globe. Both the large map and the smaller globe displayed the New World as a continent not connected to Asia. The southern section was labeled “America” (see photo). As was customary at the time, the book, map, and globe were all in Latin. A thousand copies were printed and sold throughout Europe.

America, North and South: Who’s an American?

This map shows the route taken by Vasco Núñez de Balboa when he became the first European to view the Pacific Ocean from the Isthmus of Panama in 1513, confirming the fact that America was a new continent. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

Today, more than 500 years after Columbus’s first epic voyage across the vast Atlantic Ocean, we still haven’t completely cleared up the confusion he caused by thinking he had landed in India. The term “East Indies” (Dutch East Indies [Indonesia], Spanish East Indies [the Philippines]) predates Columbus, but then he had to go and add the West Indies (the Antilles, The Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands). Thanks a lot, Cristoforo.

Before writing this, I’m not sure I could have explained how the Indies and India differ – but I’m going to skip that and focus on the terms “America” and “American.” Let’s start with the New World and the new continent first named America on a map printed in 1507.

As we now know, America derives from Americus, the Latin version of Amerigo Vespucci’s first name. The feminine form America was viewed as compatible with the existing feminine names of Asia, Africa, and Europa.

In common English usage today, North and South America are considered separate continents, but that has not always been the case. Historically the term America usually referred to a single continent until World War II and into the 1950s, even in school textbooks. In German, America is often referred to as a “double continent,” as in this German Wikipedia entry: “Amerika ist ein Doppelkontinent der Erde, der aus Nordamerika (mit Zentralamerika) und Südamerika besteht, häufig aber auch in Nord-, Mittel- und Südamerika aufgeteilt wird.”

Taken together, North/Central/South America are called “the Americas,” only very rarely America.

The Vikings were first. Oil on canvas painting: “Leif Erikson Discovers America” by Hans Dahl (1849-1937). PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

In English, particularly in the US and the UK, the word America is synonymous with the United States of America. (As in: “In America today, people are…”) Many other “Americans” living on the same double continent often object to that (with the notable exception of most Canadians). But even in German, ein Amerikaner (or eine Amerikanerin, f.) is a person from the USA. Yes, German, with its usual precision, does have the word US-Amerikaner (US-American), but it is used more in print or in news broadcasts than in daily conversation.

Of course Native Americans, who sometimes actually prefer being called Indians or Indios, are the original Americans. Despite imported diseases, slavery, genocide, and all the rest, they have survived and in many ways still maintain their cultures and languages. But they’re not likely to celebrate Columbus Day or Thanksgiving.

– HF

Related Books

The following titles, available from our partner Amazon.com, are related to the topic of how the American continent got its name.

The Last Voyage of Columbus: Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain’s Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Swordfight, Mutiny, Shipwreck, Gold, War, Hurricane, and Discovery by Martin Dugard. Kindle, hardcover, paper, audio editions from Amazon.com

The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name by Toby Lester. Kindle, hardcover, paper, audio editions from Amazon.com

The Cosmographiae Introductio of Martin Waldseemüller in Facsimile by Martin Waldseemüller. Kindle, hardcover, paper, audio editions from Amazon.com