Thread: How did America get it's name?

There seems to be a bit of animosity between the English (Celts as well?) and the Americans on this forum. All light hearted banter.

I would like to put that nonsense aside for a minute and ask a serious question. I remember reading America was named after a Welshman called Richard Americ (ap Meuric in Welsh)

Most people seem to think it was named after Amerigo Vespucci, but I would like to know the truth.

What do they teach you in those non-Uniformed schools over in the States where all the pupils carry Guns?

Maybe that al fresco frankie foreskin guy can answer me as he loves his country so much (as we all should do)

Americo Vespucci was what I was taught. We also learned of someone named Franco American.

There are also the Ricans...

^Yep. That's Merigo in the Red. I think he was Irish. nice pic with some of the Ricans.

^Not again!



I must have been confused. It wasn't "Merigo' it's Amerigo and he was a chef.

That youtube vid was FAF. The best bit is some dumb Yank commented saying "Yeah fucking dumb brits editing it blah blah blah" When they sounded Aussie or Kiwi to me. It gets worse my friends.

I prefer the Richard Americ version over that Italian geezer.

If Stephen Fry says it's true then I'll go along with that.

It's actually Richard Ameryk, a Welshman and wealthy Bristol merchant. He set foot on American soil in 1497, pre-dating Vespucci by 2 years. As the chief patron of the voyage, Richard Ameryk would have expected discoveries to be named after him. Vespucci never reached North America (only South America). All the early maps and trade were British. Nor did Vespucci ever use the term 'America' for his discovery. There's a good reason for this. New countries or continents were never named after a person's first name, but always after the second (as in Tasmania, Van Diemen's Land or the Cook Islands). America would have become Vespucci Land (or Vespuccia) if the Italian explorer had consciously given his name to it...

source: The Book of General Ignorance / Stephen Fry (highly recommended!)

Case solved...

..next!

Richard Amerike - Biography - The Biographicon

Theory of the naming of America
Richard Amerike's connection with the Americas' name surfaced in the 1890s, when the 1497 and 1498 customs rolls, archived in Westminster Abbey, were found to contain his name in connection with the payment of John Cabot's pension.

In 1908 local Bristol antiquarian and butterfly collector Alfred Hudd first proposed the theory that the word America had evolved from Amerike or ap Meryk. Alfred Hudd was a gentleman of some leisure, known as an antiquary who was a member of the Clifton Antiquarian Club of Bristol, founded in 1884 to arrange meetings and excursions for the study of objects of archaeological interest in the west of England and south Wales, and a butterfly-collector and local naturalist and member of the Bristol Naturalists' Society around Bristol.

Hudd proposed that the word "America" was originally applied to a destination across the western ocean, possibly an island or a fishing station in Newfoundland. This would have been before the existence of a continent on the other side of the Atlantic was known. However, no maps bearing this name or documents indicating a location of this supposed village are known.

According to Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage,<A href="http://www.heritage.nf.ca/exploration/bristol_vygs.html">Bristol: Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage "While it has been difficult to pinpoint the exact time frame of these North Atlantic probes, evidence that they were indeed occurring by the 1490s is found in a report sent by Pedro de Ayala, a Spanish envoy located in London. The year after Cabot's successful transatlantic voyage he wrote Ferdinand and Isabella stating that for the previous seven years the Bristolians had been equipping caravels to look for the islands of Brasile and the Seven Cities. While it is not possible to ascertain whether or not these were large scale ventures and precisely what their motives might have been, Ayala's words seem to supply some proof of westward bound voyages."

There had long been a suspicion that fishing ships in search of cod were regularly crossing the Atlantic from Bristol to Newfoundland before Columbus' first voyage. Bristol merchants bought salt cod from Iceland until 1475, when the King of Denmark stopped the trade. In 1479 four Bristol merchants received a royal charter to find another source of fish. Records discovered in 1955 suggest that from 1480, twelve years before Columbus, English fishermen may have established a facility for processing fish on the Newfoundland coast. In 1960 trading records were discovered that indicated that Richard Amerike was involved in this business. A letter from around 1481 suggests that Amerike shipped salt (for salting fish) to these men at a place they had named Brassyle. The letter also states that they had many names for headlands and harbours. Rodney Broome and others suggest that one of these names may have been "America".

John Cabot (originally Giovanni Caboto, a Venetian seaman) had become a well known mariner in England, and he came to Bristol in 1495 looking for investment in a new project. On March 5 1496, Cabot received a letter of authority from King Henry VII to make a voyage of discovery and claim lands on behalf of the monarch. It is believed that Amerike may have been one of the principal investors in the building of Cabot's ship, the Matthew.

Cabot is known to have produced maps of the coast from Maine to Newfoundland, though none have survived. He named an island off Newfoundland St. John's. Copies of these maps were sent to Spain by John Day, where Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci would have seen them. The theory suggests that Cabot may have written the name America (or similar) on his maps, but no extant maps are available to prove this assertion.

Vespucci sailed to South America and the Caribbean with Alonso de Ojeda (Hojeda) in 1499 and Gonçalo Coelho in 1501 and became convinced that these were new lands, not Asia as Columbus believed. Martin Waldseemüller, a German map-maker, published a world map in 1507 using Vespucci's previously published letters. The theory suggests that Waldseemüller assumed that the "America" that Vespucci used was derived from his first name. Waldseemüller provided an explanation of this assumption as an attachment to the map. Vespucci himself never stated that this was the case. There were immediate protests from Columbus' supporters to get the continent renamed for Columbus, but attempts were unsuccessful, since 1,000 copies of the map were already in circulation. On later maps Waldseemüller substituted the words "Terra Incognita," but it was too late; the name America was now firmly associated with the entire northern and southern continent across the Atlantic from Europe.

The above theory of the naming of America is supported in the popular "Book of General Ignorance" published by Faber and Faber in 2006.

^^

Intresting stuff, thanks. I'll have to check out that book.

Love that photo of the Ricans dancing. Quality.

Originally Posted by Hampsha

Martin Waldseemüller, a German map-maker, published a world map in 1507 using Vespucci's previously published letters. The theory suggests that Waldseemüller assumed that the "America" that Vespucci used was derived from his first name. Waldseemüller provided an explanation of this assumption as an attachment to the map. .

We've let the 'old map' topic lapse a bit, but this particular Waldseemuller map is extremely interesting, because the amount of detail on it is absolutely staggering, mindful that it was published so soon after the initial European voyages. It is really quite mind-boggling.

Moog, I thought you were going to change your nic.

Yes, thats right Neo, how do I do it? I want to pay tribute to my avatar

PM Dirty Dog.

I thought it got its name America cause all the good names like Ireland, Iraq, Pakistan

had been taken

Sorry serious question. Never heard about the Welshman, still adds a twist!

Jesus gave it to them..

..and his dad is bigger than your dad.

Originally Posted by Hampsha

Americo Vespucci was what I was taught. We also learned of someone named Franco American.

LOL!

"Franco-American"?

Spaghetti comes from China and meatballs come from somewhere other than France or America, and the product in your picture was made in Canada.

Kind of reminds me of "America", where it's all about misleading people through advertising, labeling, and marketing, to sell a product that doesn't really exist.

Originally Posted by pickel

Kind of reminds me of "America", where it's all about misleading people through advertising, labeling, and marketing, to sell a product that doesn't really exist.

Now you just wait one dad darn rooting tooting minute...

...we don't want no trouble here.

Originally Posted by Neo

Originally Posted by pickel

Kind of reminds me of "America", where it's all about misleading people through advertising, labeling, and marketing, to sell a product that doesn't really exist.

Now you just wait one dad darn rooting tooting minute...

...we don't want no trouble here.

Hey, don't get me wrong. If English and guns were good enough for Jesus, they're good enough for Americans.

God and Cuntry

Bellamy Salute

The Bellamy salute is the salute described by Francis Bellamy (1855–1931) to accompany the American Pledge of Allegiance, which he had authored. During the period when it was used with the Pledge of Allegiance, it was sometimes known as the "flag salute". During the 1920s and 1930s, Italian fascists and Nazis adopted salutes which were similar in form, resulting in controversy over the use of the Bellamy salute in the United States. It was officially replaced by the hand-over-heart salute when Congress officially amended the Flag Code on 22 December 1942.

The inventor of the saluting gesture was James B. Upham, junior partner and editor of The Youth's Companion.[1] Bellamy recalled Upham, upon reading the pledge, came into the posture of the salute, snapped his heels together, and said "Now up there is the flag; I come to salute; as I say 'I pledge allegiance to my flag,' I stretch out my right hand and keep it raised while I say the stirring words that follow."

The Bellamy salute was first demonstrated on October 12, 1892 according to Bellamy's published instructions for the "National School Celebration of Columbus Day":
The initial civilian salute was replaced with a hand-on-heart gesture, followed by the extension of the arm as described by Bellamy.

In the 1920s, Italian fascists adopted the Roman salute to symbolize their claim to have revitalized Italy on the model of ancient Rome. This was quickly copied by the German Nazis, creating the Nazi salute. The similarity to the Bellamy salute led to confusion, especially during World War II. From 1939 until the attack on Pearl Harbor, detractors of Americans who argued against intervention in World War II produced propaganda using the salute to lessen those Americans' reputations. Among the anti-interventionist Americans was aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh. Supporters of Lindbergh's views would claim that Lindbergh did not support Adolf Hitler, and that pictures of him appearing to do the Nazi salute were actually pictures of him using the Bellamy salute. In his Pulitzer prize winning biography Lindbergh, author A. Scott Berg explains that interventionist propagandists would photograph Lindbergh and other isolationists using this salute from an angle that left out the American flag, so it would be indistinguishable from the Hitler salute to observers.

In order to prevent further confusion or controversy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted the hand-over-the-heart gesture as the salute to be rendered by civilians during the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem in the United States, instead of the Bellamy salute. This was done when Congress officially amended the Flag Code on 22 December 1942.

There was initially some resistance to dropping the Bellamy salute, for example from the Daughters of the American Revolution, but this opposition died down quickly.

Bellamy salute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia