Amerrisque

August 11, 2024 1:11 AM

The Naming of America - "To question the origin of America's name is to question the nature of not only our history lessons but our very identity as Americans." [Naming of the Americas, Origin of the name America (via 47:55 ;)]
posted by kliuless (18 comments total)

I'm sticking with the Americo Vespucci explanation
posted by Narrative_Historian at 3:14 AM on August 11 [6 favorites]

The current (fifth) edition of Webster's New World College Dictionary admits the mystery that surrounds the origin of the name America, saying it derives from "Americus Vespucius … but < ? Sp Amerrique, name of a mountain range in Nicaragua, used by early explorers for the newly discovered lands < ? AmInd." No definitive conclusions can be reached. Too many claims are, for lack of hard evidence, based on speculation. Theories about the true origin of the name are ultimately historical fictions, whose authors are inclined to impose their own political, cultural, or national agendas on the name and its origin. Yet behind these fictions lie compelling views of the New World. Taken together, they form a multicultural vision of its distinctive character. To hear Americus in the name; to hear the Amerrique Mountains and their perpetual wind; to hear the African in the Mayan iq' amaq'el; to hear the Scandinavian Ommerike, as well as Amteric, and the Algonquin Em-erika; to hear Saint Emeric of Hungary; to hear Amalrich, the Gothic lord of the work ethic; to hear Armorica, the ancient Gaulish name meaning place by the sea; and to hear the English official, Amerike — to hear such echoes in the name of our hemisphere is to hear ourselves.

"I am large, I contain multitudes."
posted by chavenet at 4:27 AM on August 11 [4 favorites]

The article does a pretty good job of casting doubt on some of the more fanciful claims. A few things that should probably be emphasized:

* John Cabot never got anywhere near Nicaragua.
* Nicaragua didn't speak a Mayan language.
* "Amerrique" also appears as "Amerrisque"

Trying to sort some of this out, I found this interesting 1918 article that reviews Marcou's claims with even more skepticism.
posted by zompist at 4:36 AM on August 11 [3 favorites]

Really, the real origin is the cartographer’s daughter scrawled “I’m Erica” on the map, and it got copied in wrong. Easy!
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:36 AM on August 11 [11 favorites]

Oh this is fun!
posted by lokta at 4:36 AM on August 11 [1 favorite]

I prefer the simpler argument about people in the US saying that they are Americans, while everybody else in this hemisphere gets to say the same thing. But given the first thing, they might not want to.
posted by njohnson23 at 6:47 AM on August 11 [1 favorite]

I thought we'd already solved who we named the country for?
posted by mittens at 7:19 AM on August 11 [4 favorites]

AMERICA, we learn as schoolchildren, was named in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, for his discovery of the mainland of the New World.

When I was a schoolchild in the early Seventies, I was taught that it was because of Waldseemüller’s map, just like the article says.
posted by doubtfulpalace at 7:47 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]

The ludicrous theory referenced, which proposes an Old Norse origin for the name America, rests on an equally ludicrous etymology. The word “amt”, is a loan word from German into Danish in the 16th Century, much too early for Leifr Eiríksson himself to use it (he died between 1018-25 CE), and indeed entering the language after the Americas were named South and North America.

I got a bit obsessed with the origins of this absurdity, but the earliest example I could find of this theory, from 1924, doesn’t cite anyone.
posted by Kattullus at 9:35 AM on August 11 [4 favorites]

Amara Terra, the bitter land.
posted by Phanx at 9:42 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]

This is the kind of conspiracy crankery I like, low stakes and trivial.
posted by betweenthebars at 9:47 AM on August 11 [4 favorites]

Waldseemüller’s map [loc]

[smithsonian:]

Why dwell on this arcane question of authorship? Because whoever wrote the Introduction to Cosmography was almost certainly the person who coined the name "America"—and here, too, the balance tilts in [Matthias] Ringmann's favor. The famous naming-of-America paragraph sounds a lot like Ringmann... In both poetry and prose he regularly amused himself by making up words, by punning in different languages and by investing his writing with hidden meanings. The naming-of-America passage is rich in just this sort of wordplay, much of which requires a familiarity with Greek. The key to the whole passage, almost always overlooked, is the curious name Amerigen (which Ringmann quickly Latinizes and then feminizes to come up with America). To get Amerigen, Ringmann combined the name Amerigo with the Greek word gen, the accusative form of a word meaning "earth,"... Gen can also mean "born" in Greek, and the word ameros can mean "new," making it possible to read Amerigen as ... "born new"—a double-entendre that would have delighted Ringmann... The name may also contain a play on meros, a Greek word sometimes translated as "place." Here Amerigen becomes A-meri-gen, or "No-place-land"—
...
Waldseemüller continued to make maps, including at least three that depicted the New World, but never again did he depict it as surrounded by water, or call it America—more evidence that these ideas were Ringmann's. On one of his later maps, the Carta Marina of 1516 [“possibly reflecting the hand of the artist Albrecht Dürer” loc]—which identifies South America only as "Terra Nova"—

Ned Blackhawk's Rediscovery of America is also relevant here [g]
posted by HearHere at 11:00 AM on August 11 [6 favorites]

I’ve gotten tantalizingly close to finding the origin of the absurd “Amt-Eric” hypothesis. Here follows an unsigned note from 1954 in the volume 2, number 4 issue of Names: A Journal of Onomastics:

Amt-Eric. – The United Press recently supplied its subscribers with a news item based on the research of H. A. Anderson of Wisconsin. According to this historian the root amt means "land of" in Scandinavian, and since Leif, the son of Eric first discovered the new continent the name America is simply a corruption off AmtEric, “land of Eric.” Unless Moscow has already advanced its claim to the discovery and naming of America, it will only be a matter of time until a Russian scholar will find two roots in the Russian language which will supply the origin of the name America.

If only we’d have a first name. I have been unable to find anything about H. A. Anderson of Wisconsin.
posted by Kattullus at 11:27 AM on August 11 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: I am Erika.
posted by mule98J at 11:38 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]

Kattullus, Norse America: the story of a founding myth [g] mentions an earlier[?] Anderson:

Public awareness of the idea of a Norse discovery of America prior to Columbus broadened with the publication by Rasmus Anderson of America not discovered by Columbus in 1874… The high-water mark of the Norse discovery hypothesis came in 1893, three years after the ninth-century Gokstad ship [wiki] (now in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo) had been found in a burial mound on Kristianiafjord (now Oslofjord)...

posted by HearHere at 1:12 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]

I have not got a good answer why we sometimes use first names for some Italian people and not others.

Christopher Columbus is called Columbus. However, Amerigo Vespucci, Galileo Galilei, Raphaello Santi, Michelangelo Buonarotti etc. are called by their first names. Why?

BTW, I am glad it's America and not Vespuccia or something like that.
posted by indianbadger1 at 3:21 PM on August 11

Except when he's called Cristóbal Colón.
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:24 PM on August 11

Oh and also, I have no idea what “ommerike” is supposed to be in Old Norse. The word “ríki” meant something like “kingdom” or “realm”, and was applied to places, e.g. the Norse predecessor to Russia was known as “Garðaríki”, or the “Realm of Walled Towns”. So “rike” could be “ríki”, but what “omme” could be is lost on me.
posted by Kattullus at 11:37 PM on August 11 [2 favorites]