Origin of the name of America

Where do the names of continents come from? First mention the New World, the "strange" land for Europeans until the sixteenth century.

Why do we call America America , not Vespucia ? Scientists have asked this question for centuries and here is a most convincing explanation.

The new land that the Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) discovered, was given the name of the Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) , by A. Vespucci was the first. meticulously describe the land in 1507 , through famous Latin letters gathered under the title "Quattuor Americi Vespuccij navigationes" (4 journeys of Amerigo Vespucci), under which the new land he placed his own name.

However, there is a lot of controversy surrounding this naming. Brazilian historians believe that America's name is in place, from "Maroca" - the supreme deity of Brazilian indigenous people. The French scholar Francois Marcus insists that the name derives from the name of the native being Los Amériques.

Particularly the French-American scientist Lamber D'Senri gave definitive evidence, that the new land that Vespucci described was actually called by that name, with the names Amaraca, Ameriocapana, or Ameracapana. ever met long ago. While some Spanish historians were convinced, that the maritime explorer Alonso de Ojeda (1468-1515) found the Venezuelan port of Maracaibo, now in 1499, and then remained in the His notebook is Ameriocapana .

But Austrian Austrian journalist Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) considered the above hypotheses "ridiculous things from confusion". In the mid-sixteenth century the center of the European cartography world moved to Germany. The young cartographer Martin Valdseemuller (1470-1520) became immortal, calling a part of Brazil (then considered an island) with the name Amerigo Vespucci through the map "Universalis Cosmographia" (Universe Universal learning), commonly referred to as "Walled Valdseemuller Map" , was originally drawn by Martin at age 32 in 1503, and was first published in April 1950.

Statue of A. Vespucci - who has the honor to name the Americas - in the city of his home town of Florence, Italy.

Many new questions arise, when a group of French experts in Saint-Dié town near Strasbourg found Amerigo's letters through a translation in Latin. The word "Amerigo" in Latin is "Alberic". So why does M. Valdseemuller use the Italian name of the navigator? Why did the German cartographers call the new land with their own names, not the customary family name of A. Vespucci?

Only kings have the honor to have their names named separately! No one has answered this question yet. There is one more thing that is hard to understand for the Spaniards and the British, too, for a long time not to call the New World continent America. Even in 1627, more than 1.3 centuries after C. Columbus found America, the Spaniards banned all America-based maps - which they called the West Indies (West). Press).

It was not until the end of the 17th century that it was changed from West Indies to America. Earlier both the South American region was called Peru or "Piru" (Country of gold and silver). This place is used by people who have discovered the waters of the southern Pacific Ocean, a Spanish man who specializes in raising horses and exploring adventure is Vasco Núnez De Balboa (1475-1519). On the reliefs of portraits of the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) wrote the Latin inscription meaning: "Ferdinand Magellan - The man who found the southern strait of Piru land".

Particularly the British for their part in a long period called America "New World". By the end of the sixteenth century, the Indians in the eyes of the Europeans were simply simply " Children of nature". So what does the name Amerigo mean, that makes many people bother?

It is the conjugate of 2 from Gothic in the Middle Ages: Amala and Reics. "Amal" means labor lover, sincere, willing to help others. One of the Ostrogoth kings was named Amal.

In the sixth century, Spain was given to the grandson by the King Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great (454-526) with the title of Amalric ruler. And the word "Ric" or "Reics" has a lot of meanings: strong, strong, capable, kings . That way "Amalric" is a combination of "Amal" and "Ric" meaning hero, leader, king After the Gothic invasion of Italy, this name began to be called slightly differently.

In Italian grammar, two vowels "L" and "R" cannot stand close to each other, so " LR" changes to "RR". Vespucci's own name is written by two words "R" : Amerrigo. So why does M. Valdseemuller call the name of the land only by his own name with an "R" of A. Vespucci?

Many researchers explain by the fact that in Spanish, the Italian surname is very rare. A. Vespucci served the Spaniards and by that time (early sixteenth century) in Spain there was no second Florence native of his last name. So they called simply Amerigo (on this interesting topic, foreigners don't have any problems when they are accepted by name or surname).

Although the argument of the cartographer M. Valdseemuller is not very convincing, since he once wrote: "After Asia - Asia and Europe - Europe have taken the name of women, so the New World needs to be honored with the name of a man ".

Views of Amerigo Vespucci exploded in the nineteenth century, when some scholars tried to prove that A.Vespucci had not completed his fourth trip to America. By the early 1970s, this issue had been turned over by French researcher Julie Markd when making her own point of view: America's name comes from the Americi Indian tribes, who until The end of the nineteenth century still lives along Lake Nicaragua.

In 1502, C. Columbus reached the "Moskitov shore" - the Nicaragua coast today. When exchanging goods with Indians, the Spanish asked where they had gold from? They pointed south and replied: "Americos" , obviously talking about places with gold. That is the origin of the legend of American gold, forming a " fever" that quickly spreads across Europe.