On lasting presentation in the Library of Congress in Washington , D.C. , is an enormous , 500 - year - former worldmapthat was the very first to apply the name " America . " It ’s the only surviving copy of what ’s live as the1507 Waldseemüller Map , a priceless historic artefact fall upon in the basement of a German palace in 1901 and purchased by the Library of Congress for $ 10 million in 2003 .
" It ’s the birth certificate of America , " says Chet Van Duzer , a mapmaking historian who has worked with the Library of Congress and is now affiliated with theLazarus Project , which uses multi - ghostlike imaging to reclaim and decipher ancient documents .
But equally as entrancing as the 1507 single-valued function is the one that ’s mounted next to it at the Library of Congress , theCarta Marina of 1516 . This Earth map was published just nine years later by the very same humans , Martin Waldseemüller , but the Book " America " is nowhere to be rule . In its place is merely " Terra Nova " or " New World . "
" The most amazing thing about the name ' America ' is that the guy who fabricate it resolve it was n’t the right name , " says Van Duzer .
Amerigo Vespucci, the Self-Promoter
Everyone have intercourse thatChristopher Columbus"discovered " America in 1492 , even though he never set ft in North America and died insist that he had launch a westerly route to Asia . So why did n’t the makers of the 1507 Waldseemüller mapping name the fresh discovered lands " Columbia " instead of " America " ?
Probably because Columbus did n’t write a well - sell leaflet about his travels full of sex , vehemence and nakedcannibalslike his fellow Italian IE , Amerigo Vespucci , who sailed to the New World a decade after Columbus .
" Vespucci was a good ego - promoter than Columbus , " say Van Duzer , " and his account are more shocking , shall we say , than Columbus ’s , so they were reprint more often . "
Vespucci published two wildly pop account of his voyages to the New World . The first , written in 1504 , was call " Mondus Novis " and understandably swan Vespucci ’s claim that the lands across the Atlantic were indeed a new continent , not an annexe of Asia or just a with child island .
" For this transcends the view held by our ancients … that there is no continent to the south beyond the equator , but only the sea which they name the Atlantic , " write Vespucci . " But that this their opinion is untrue and utterly defend to the truth , this my last ocean trip has made manifest ; for in those southern part I have found a continent more obtusely peopled and abounding in fauna than our Europe or Asia or Africa . " By following the South American coast to just 400 mi ( 643 kilometers ) short of Tierra Del Fuego , Vespucci was convert that he was traveling around a new continent .
" Mondus Novis " also included plenty of colorful details about the " curious natives , " whom Vespucci depicted as blue and almost childlike in nature , but nevertheless barbarous and in spades un - Christian in their customs , which included facial piercings , cannibalism and intimate promiscuity .
A 2d pamphlet screw as the " Soderini Letter , " which may not have been write all by Vespucci , made the beat in 1505 . The disputed school text doubled down on Vespucci ’s descriptions of the naked locals and provided romp - by - romp score of a few fierce clashes between Vespucci ’s men and the more aggressive tribe .
In one " ridiculous function , " Vespucci ’s men welcomed some of the more adventuresome Indians onto their ship where the Europeans determine to " provoke off some of our great guns . "
" [ A]nd when the explosion took place , most of them through fear swan themselves ( into the ocean ) to swim , not otherwise than frog on the margins of a pond , when they see something that frighten them , will jump into the water , just so did those people , " write Vespucci . " [ A]nd those who persist in the ships were so panic-stricken that we regretted our natural process . "
Mapping the ‘Land of Amerigo’
Vespucci ’s accounts were widely read throughout Europe , include the small hamlet of Saint - Dié - First State - Vosges in Lorraine , France , where mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller and his cooperator Matthias Ringmann were compiling an ambitious novel single-valued function of the world .
As the historians William Connell and Stanislao Pugliese Federal Reserve note in " The Routledge chronicle of Italian Americans , " when Waldseemüller and Ringmann got their hand on Vespucci ’s Soderini Letter in 1507 , " the two men believed it to be the in vogue countersign on the discovery in the western sea . "
Waldseemüller and Ringmann had undoubtedly see of Columbus , but were unimpressed . At the top of their giant 1507 map , which mensurate 4.2 feet by 7.6 feet ( 1.28 meters by 2.33 metre ) , they engraved portrayal of the two men they believed to be the two greatest geographer of the ancient and forward-looking world : the Hellenic mathematician Ptolemy and our friend Vespucci .
In a text that accompanied the 1507 Waldseemüller Map , the two men explained precisely why they named the new continent , which is modernistic - twenty-four hours South America , after Vespucci .
" [ A]nd the fourth part of the earth , which , because Amerigo discovered it , we may call Amerige , the land of Amerigo , so to speak , or America . "
Waldseemüller and Ringmann named the continent America " because Amerigo bring out it . " Case closed .
A Humbling Correction, But Too Late
It did n’t take long for Waldseemüller and Ringmann to realize their mistake . But since 16th - century mapmaking and printmaking was a fastidiously sluggish summons , it took a full nine days — downright quick in those day — for the man to release a corrected map , the Carta Marina of 1516 , along with a wordy mea culpa .
In the Carta Marina of 1516 , the name America is pop off , substituted with " Terra Nova . " Presumably the man had figured out that Columbus , not Vespucci , was the true discoverer of America . But by 1516 , at least six other universe maps had been published using the name America . And despite Waldseemüller and Ringmann ’s belated recantation , the original name stuck .
America was America from then on .
