In this column, “Why was America named after Amerigo Vespucci? (16-Sep-1994),”, Cecil states that America was named after Amerigo Vespucci.
However, I read in trivia meister L. M. “Lou” Boyd’s column of 25 January 2000 (published in my local newspaper, The Orange County Register, Orange County, California, USA,) the following piece of information:
So, is Cecil one of those scholars? Should the column be corrected?
Here’s the deal. There is a mountain chain in Nicaragua called the “Amerrisque”. The claims that they are the source for the naming of the two continents of the western hemishere have been made by scholastic boosters of indigenous culture, most prominantly the Peruvian writer Ricardo Palma. This debate reached its peak during the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery”, when the poor guy was proclaimed to be everything from a genocidal maniac to a tax evader.
I find it hard to believe that many, let alone most scholars even care. The problem with Boyd is that he never spends more than one sentence talking about any single subject. He’s like Ripley’s Believe it or Not. He just throws stuff out there with no attempt to support his statements or any offer of opposing views.
It may be BOTH. False etymologies are common in Ancient Roman Latin literature.
Perhaps the name was originaly the Indian, and an some ignoramus seeking an etymology, pegged it Amerigo’s Land. This has happened before.
Indian names are often Europeanized.
LM Boyd will respond if challenged, and he has retracted statements if they are shown false.
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If it were named after Vespucci, would it not be Ameriga? I like the mountain theory…
I would love to see some evidence of a scholar who agrees with this new idea, let alone evidence that the hypothesis is correct.
How would you contact him? Write to L. M. Boyd, c/o your local newspaper?
I agree with Ursa Major and DSYoung, that L.M. Boyd is quick to affirm dubious items without any backing/reference.
Rob Roy, you may well be right (about the false etymology). One way to verify that would be to see if the “Amerrisque” mountains are present, with that name, in the Cosmographiae Introduction by Martin Waldseemueller et al. (see Cecil’s column)
If America was named after some mountains in Nicaragua why was the term first applied to South America (which Vespucci visited and wrote about) and only later extended to include North and Central America (where Nicaragua is located)?
This may sound totally absurd but what they teach us in school is that it is in fact named after Amerigo Vespucci the “discoverer” of South America. It seems to me that if Amerigo discovered South and then whoever (?) comes along and finds north and names it he would figure oh…this is the same place that Amerigo found. I understand this is worded very badly but I’m too lazy to put together a good sentence. As far as the mountains go I somehow doubt that the explorers really got too much out of the Indians words. Look at Christopher Columbus…he called them Indians no matter what the Indians actually called themselves.
–Michael
Or would you rather talk about monkeys?
nebuli, Michael, early explorers and cartographers had no clear idea of the full geography of North, Central and South America. So one could hear of the name “Amerrisque” and think it applied to a part of the world that was the same as South America.
Let me make it clear that I’m not saying the “Amerrisque” explanation is the correct one. I’m not an expert on the subject, but the explanation I had always heard was the “Amerigo Vespucci” one. I just read about the “Amerrisque” one recently in the paper.
There is a mountain called America. The woman thought it beautiful & called her son that, America. Then America discovered america. easy.
Hmm. If the United States wasn’t already called America, then, you know, it would be a good kid’s name.
Before I ever heard this Amerigo thingummy story, I figured that America was named after Armorica, which I think was the old name for Spain.
Is there any link at all to that in actuality?
For what it’s worth, Armorica is the old name of the peninsula in France that is now called Britany, so called because in the Dark Ages it was populated by British refugees fleeing before the invading Saxon hordes. To this day, the people still speak a language related to Welsh (the Welsh, of course, being the refugees who fled into the western mountains of Britain, instead).
(And “Great Britain” is called that to distinguish it from Britany, “Britain the Lesser”.)
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
Well, intuition tells me that this idea is bunk. The mountain range in question is a very minor topographical feature. I can see no reason to believe that the early explorers around during the naming of the continent would be impressed upon by that minor area of Nicaragua (let alone if they were even there, I am not aware of the European progression to this part of the New World). I understand that the foundation of the Amerigo explaination isn’t exactly concrete, but the chances of the mapmaker credited with naming the continent being influenced by a native word seem less likely than his being smitten with Vespucci. If the contention is that the name was made long before this mapmakers epiphany, then one would simply need to map the explorers progress against the date the name first appeared in use. I suspect that the name predates common penetration into this area of the new world. Even if a couple of traders had reached this area, I doubt that their experience would have been significant enough to inspire naming. Any native word which hopes to be applied to the etymology of the Americas would likely need to be a term which saturated the region where heavy interaction occured. Nicuragua isn’t this type of reason. It would be like saying Chicago was named for the native word for the Rocky mountains. I don’t doubt that one could argue a European may have heard reference to the Rockies, but can not see that it would impress them enough to begin calling the region that.
Abbie Hoffman named his son america. (sp/cap?)
I was told that Amerigo was a cartographer, and stuck his own name on the continent; I like Cecil’s explanation, which puts him in a better light.
Armorica and “Amerrisque” are red herrings, or would be, if there were any historical doubt about the derivation of America, which I’m pretty confident there isn’t. 
None of which precludes the Amerrisque range being called that by the locals after the European name “America.” (Sounds like a plausible enough link, but one that’ll piss off the “boosters of indigenous culture.”)
There is at least one documented case of the inhabitants of a region of the New World picking up on general names like “Columbia” and “America” and mis-identifying them as names for the inhabitants home region. Even today, the descendants of English colonists in North America call their country “America” and consider Latin Americans “un-American,” so to speak. :rolleyes:
I’m a member of the Monarchist political party.
Brittany is NOT so called for that reason. It is called that because it is populated by Celts who are related to the Celts who live in Great Britain and Ireland. The name “Britain” is related to the name of their great goddess Brigid (pronounced “Breed”) - in Latin, Britannia.
Um, would those “British refugees” fleeing from Saxons be Celts?
People’s names were Latinized when converted to a place name, and IIRC the old Latin alphabet had no letter G - it was created later by adding a little tail on the C. Probably the cartographer was just being old-fashioned.
America was named after the Templars’ legendary “Land across the sea”, which they named “La Merica”. When the Templars got shut down in 1307, most of the membership was captured…but the fleet was not. Most of the ships are supposed to have reached Scotland, where they buried the treasure of Solomon under a small chapel in a place called Rosslyn.
But some of the ships, whether by design or accident, crossed the ocean to the New World.
Supposed proof of this is a gravestone found on Rhode Island bearing the Templar Cross, and predating any other European arrivals by almost 200 years…
However, it appears that they didn’t last long upon arrival…they probably weren’t prepared for winter on the East Coast!
StoneCutter, are you talking about Rhode Island’s Old Stone Mill?
Some people believe it was built by Benedict Arnold, and others by Vikings. What is your evidence for a construction by the Knights Templar?