Americas

The Americas are the lands of the Western hemisphere or New World consisting of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28. more...

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4% of its land area) and contain about 14% of the human population.

The designation is a relatively recent and less ambiguous alternative to America, which may refer to either the entire landmass or the United States of America. The original usage to describe what is sometimes considered a single continent or supercontinent is deprecated for clarity, for which the Americas is used to collectively refer to the landmass and various regions of it. When used to describe a single landmass, analogous terms to America or (the) Americas are Eurasia, which consists of Europe and Asia collectively, and Eurafrasia, which is Eurasia and Africa.

Naming of America

The earliest known use of the name America for this particular landmass dates from 1507. It appears on a globe and a large map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges. An accompanying book, Cosmographiae Introductio, explains that the name was derived from the Latinized version of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci's name, Americus Vespucius, in its feminine form, America, as the other continents all have Latin feminine names.

Vespucci's role in the naming issue, like his exploratory activity, is unclear and most probably a tale. Some sources say that he was unaware of the widespread use of his name to refer to the new landmass. Others hold that he promulgated a story that he had made a secret voyage westward and sighted land in 1491, a year before Columbus. If he did indeed make such claims, they backfired, and only served to prolong the ongoing debate on whether the "Indies" were really a new land, or just an extension of Asia.

However, as Dr. Basil Cottle (Author, Dictionary of Surnames, 1967) points out, new countries or continents are never named after a person's first name, always after their second name (with the exception of some places named after the first names of monarchs or princes, such as Carolina). Thus, America should really have become Vespucci Land or Vespuccia if the Italian explorer really gave his name to the continent. Christopher Columbus, who had first brought the region's existence to the attention of Renaissance era voyagers, had died in 1506 (believing, to the end, that he'd discovered and colonized part of India) and could not protest Waldseemüller's decision.

A few alternative theories regarding the landmass' naming have been proposed, but none of them has achieved any widespread acceptance.

One alternative, first advanced by Jules Marcou in 1875 and later recounted by novelist Jan Carew, is that the name America derives from the district of Amerrique in Nicaragua. The gold-rich district of Amerrique was purportedly visited by both Vespucci and Columbus, for whom the name became synonymous with gold. According to Marcou, Vespucci later applied the name to the New World, and even changed the spelling of his own name from Alberigo to Amerigo to reflect the importance of the discovery.

Read more at Wikipedia.org