German chancellor hands over map first naming America

[3Quartets]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday officially handed over to the United States the 500-year-old map that was the first to tell the world of a new land it called America.

Library of Congress historians say the world map, completed by German-born cleric and cartographer Martin Waldseemueller in 1507, is the first known document to use the name America — named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci — the first to depict the Western Hemisphere and the first to show separate Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/4763661.html

[3Quartets]

Very interesting. For those in the know, or with opinions, why name it after Amerigo Vespucci when Christopher Columbus preceded him? Is it because Amerigo recognized this as a new land and Columbus still believed it as Asia?

Secondly, how do we get from Amerigo to America?

[CT-Freeper]

Secondly, how do we get from Amerigo to America?

How do we get from Columbus to Columbia, or, alternatively, Colombia?

[Teacher317]

Thanks, Angie!

[massgopguy]

God Bless Vespucciland!

[Rb ver. 2.0]

[Rodney King]

Not sure where America came from, but it’s the wrong name. This is really Greater Vinland.

[wideawake]

Is it because Amerigo recognized this as a new land and Columbus still believed it as Asia?

Correct. He was the first to realize that South America was a separate continent - not just a chain of islands.

Secondly, how do we get from Amerigo to America?

In the same way we get from from Charles (Carolus) to Carolina - by feminizing the masculine, since land (terra) is feminine in Latin.

And "g" becomes "c" because the Italian "g" sounds like "c" to the English/German ear. In Italian "gh" sounds like our "g" while Italian "g" sounds very clipped.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Eye-talien to Latin.

[3Quartets]

Okay, cool.

[Bigg Red]

Little Angie handed it over? I saw a price of $10 MILLION cited in the crawl this morning on TV.

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

So when do the atheists file suit because Waldseemueller was a cleric?

[azhenfud]

Before we got here it was “Amerigo”. Now that we’re here it’s “Americame” or ‘America’ ‘me’.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Why did Germany have to “hand over” a map to the US?

Is this just a nice gesture? Really, what’s the deal here?

I’m thinking, couldn’t we just have a copy?

And after all, the name DOES refer to the entire land mass, not just even NA - in fact, it’s more familiar with SA at that point.

[dragonblustar]

California always had an inflated ego of itself even early on.

[dragonblustar]

**Secondly, how do we get from Amerigo to America?

Or why not just Vespucci???

[Centurion2000]

Thank you Germany.

[KOZ.]

You’d rather in the United States of Vespucci?

That’s just unamerican. :)

[preacher]

Another old map.

http://www.prep.mcneese.edu/engr/engr321/preis/afet/afet0.htm

[elcid1970]

Also, Latin was the common language of scholarship and science. Amerigo Vespucci’s name, when latinized, became Americus Vespuccius.

Then the land mass he recognized as unique became Terra America.

I guess MEChA wants that changed, too.

[pepsi_junkie]

There was an interesting documentary on this recently. The map was known to have existed (1000 were printed) at some point but was lost. As it happened, there was a noble family with a private library going back to the middle ages that had put a binding on the map and stuck it on a shelf as a book. And there it sat, unknown until someone cataloging the books a few years ago noticed it. At first they thought it was part of a later map (not even sure it was a Vespucci) but they eventually and figured that not only was it by Vespucci but it was earlier than any known surviving map of his. Probably only survived because it had been bound (rather than hung) and forgotten.