These were the first maps to show the Americas as a land mass separate from Asia. The name America is given to the territory of modern Brazil in the bottom left hand section of the map. An accompanying book, Cosmographiae Introductio, was probably anonymously written by Waldseemüller's collaborator Matthias Ringmann, states:
"I do not see what right any one would have to object to calling this part [that is, the South American mainland], after Americus who discovered it and who is a man of intelligence, Amerigen, that is, the Land of Americus, or America: since both Europa and Asia got their names from women".
Americus Vesputius was the Latinized name of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci's. Amerigo Vespucci (1454 – 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer who first suggested that Brazil and the West Indies were not the eastern regions of Asia as initially assumed as a result of Columbus' voyages, but were an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to the Europeans.
Vespucci was apparently unaware of the use of his name to refer to the new landmass, as Waldseemüller's maps did not reach Spain until a few years after his death.
Ringmann may have been misled into crediting Vespucci by the widely published Soderini Letter, a sensationalized version of one of Vespucci's actual letters reporting on the mapping of the South American coast, which glamourized his discoveries and implied that he had recognized that South America was a continent separate from Asia; in fact, it is not known what Vespucci believed on this count, and he may have died believing, like Columbus, that he had reached the East Indies in Asia rather than a new continent.
Gerardus Mercator's first map of the world 1538
Spain officially refused to accept the name America for two centuries, saying that Columbus should get credit, and Waldseemüller's later maps, after Ringmann's death, did not include it; however, usage was established when Gerardus Mercator applied the name to the entire New World in his 1538 world map.
Acceptance and usage may have been aided by the "natural poetic counterpart" that the name America made with Asia, Africa, and Europa.
There are other proposals as to the origin of the name, including the theory that the name comes from a Nicaraguan mountain range, and that the name derives from the owner of the ship sailed by John Cabot, the Matthew, Richard Amerike (or Ameryk). Amerike was an Anglo-Welsh merchant, royal customs officer and, at the end of his life, sheriff of Bristol.
So, what's in a name?
As far as usage of the naming of Americas is concerned, Wikipedia says that:
In modern English, North and South America are generally considered separate continents, and taken together are called the Americas in the plural, parallel to similar situations such as the Carolinas. When conceived as a unitary continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a clarifying context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America.However there is no link as yet to another Wikipedia page - Names for United States citizens, a page that has seen some Wikipedia editorial "squabbles".
This is clearly a case of cultural hegemony, and the obvious Americanisation of the world. Here is an unapologetic "fine whine" for example:
So let me say on behalf of all Americans to anti-“Americans” everywhere: We’re not going to stop using “America.” We should not stop. Get over it.
Strangely, this contemporary attitude sits comfortably alongside The Monroe Doctrine of 1823, in an era when the United States had yet to achieve any kind of hegemony, be it cultural or military, declaring that the New World is no longer subject to colonization by the European countries:
The occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.The second key passage, which contains a fuller statement of the Doctrine, is addressed to the "allied powers" of Europe (that is, the Holy Alliance); it clarifies that the U.S. remains neutral on existing European colonies in the Americas but is opposed to "interpositions" that would create new colonies among the newly independent Spanish American republics:
We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power, we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.In other words:
America is for the AmericansThe reaction in Latin America to the Monroe Doctrine was generally favorable but on some occasions suspicious. John Crow, author of The Epic of Latin America, states, "Simón Bolívar himself, still in the midst of his last campaign against the Spaniards, Santander in Colombia, Rivadavia in Argentina, Victoria in Mexico—leaders of the emancipation movement everywhere—received Monroe's words with sincerest gratitude". Crow argues that the leaders of Latin America were realists. They knew that the President of the United States wielded very little power at the time, particularly without the backing of the British forces, and figured that the Monroe Doctrine was unenforceable if the United States stood alone against the Holy Alliance. While they appreciated and praised their support in the north, they knew that the future of their independence was in the hands of the British and their powerful navy. In 1826, Bolivar called upon his Congress of Panama to host the first "Pan-American" meeting. In the eyes of Bolivar and his men, the Monroe Doctrine was to become nothing more than a tool of national policy. According to Crow, "It was not meant to be, and was never intended to be a charter for concerted hemispheric action".
At the same time, some people questioned the intentions behind the Monroe Doctrine. Diego Portales, a Chilean businessman and minister, wrote to a friend:
"But we have to be very careful: for the Americans of the north [from the United States], the only Americans are themselves".
