History of the United States America before colonial times For thousands of years, Indians were the only inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere. After returning to Florence, he suspected that Christopher Columbus was not correct in assuming that … Benjamin Franklin popularized the concept of a political union in his famous "Join, Or Die" cartoon in 1754. The name America was first recorded in 1507. The name was also used (together with the related term Amerigen) in the Cosmographiae Introductio, apparently written by Matthias Ringmann, in reference to South America. Mind you, the so-called Black People were already here, approximately 40,000-50,000 years before the so-called Indians. Common wisdom has it that it was named after Amerigo Vespucci, but the name America appeared first on 16th century English maps … Christie's auction house says a two-dimensional globe created by Martin Waldseemüller was the earliest recorded use of the term. Is it possible assuming the identity of two entire continents of nations could be just another “land grab” by a nation so hellbent on achieving superiority that it would bowl over entire races of people and cut in the proverbial line just for the United States to be called “America”? Granted, naming a new land is largely a symbolic gesture, given that the Europeans didn't control these areas for some time. In 1507, a German cartographer named Martin Waldseemüller was drawing a map of the world—a very serious map. The most common theory about the origin of America's name is that the country is named after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer who reached the New World in 1502. Comprised of 12 wooden panels, it was eight feet wide and four-and-a-half feet tall. The most interesting question of all is why America was named after a guy who was otherwise so obscure. Here’s the story of how America got its name. Before that time, there was no name that collectively identified the Western Hemisphere. 'america' derives from an Italian cartographer and merchant called Americo Vespucci. From Amerigo to America. They spread across the hemisphere to the tip of South America. The Anishinaabek are one of the most widespread nations of the Aboriginal People of Turtle Island. The name Turtle Island comes from the Aboriginal Creation story. How America Got Its Name The Story of How America Got Its Name. It is an irony of history that the name "America" did not come from Christopher Columbus.That distinction belongs to a … He called it the Universalis Cosmographia, or Universal Cosmography. The Americas (also collectively called America; French: Amérique, Dutch: Amerika, Spanish and Portuguese: América) comprise the totality of the continents of North and South America. In an accompanying book, Waldseemüller published one of the Vespucci accounts; this led to criticism that Vespucci was trying to usurp Christopher Columbus' glory. In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent America after the feminine Latin version of Vespucci's first name. At the same time that Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, one of Italy's future explorers, Amerigo Vespucci, was born in Florence. Only later would this area be given a unifying name—America—and the people labeled “Indians” by Europe. The people who lived there before? North America was known as Amexam/Northwest Africa and later parts of it was named by the so-called Indians, Turtle Island, who came to North America about 12,000 years ago. I understand that it may have been a blunder by an early map-maker. On September 9, 1776, the Continental Congress formally declares the name of the new nation to be the “United States” of America. It was named after Richard Americ the sheriff of Bristol, whose family coat of arms (the stars and stripes) also formed the basis of the US flag (long before Washington). Along with their associated islands, they cover 8% of Earth's total surface area and 28.4% of its land area. This extremely rare work contains the first suggestion that the area of Columbus' discovery be named "America" in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, who recognized that a "New World," the so-called fourth part of the world, had been reached through Columbus' voyage.