The Naming of America (2023)
jonathancohenweb.com
jonathancohenweb.com
I found this little aside in the opening paragraph interesting. Who did she ask? And was she successful?
A quick google search didn’t turn up much about America Vespucci. I did find one article about her that makes her sound very interesting [1], but no mention of the above request. I’m guessing from the way she moved around after 1839 her request was not granted, though.
[1] https://jeffcowiki.miraheze.org/wiki/Marie_Helene_America_Ve...
Americus Vespucius, female, age 26, Tuscany
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-51SJ-FT
There are hundreds of newspaper stories from around the country about her in the U.S.
> The object for which she had specially come to America, was to obtain, if possible, a grant of land from the Congress of the United States, as a means of honourable and independent support and the failure of her application, as well as the grounds on which it was deemed necessary to decline compliance with the request, are fully and fairly stated in the following Report made to the Senate of the United States, by Mr. Walker, of Mississippi.
Where a report names that she seems to be worth of the name, but fails to mention any actual land grant, which I would assume is a nice way to say no.
> She feels that the name she bears is a prouder title than any that earthly monarchs can bestow; She asking us for a small corner of American soil, where she may pass the remainder of her days in this land of her adoption. She comes here as an exile, separated for ever from her family and friends; a stranger, without a country and without a home; expelled from her native Italy, for the avowal maintenance of opinions favourable to free institutions, and an ardent desire for the establishment of her country's freedom. That she indeed is worthy of the name of America —that her heart is indeed imbued with American principles, and fervent love for human liberty, is proved in her case, by toils, and perils, and sacrifices, worthy Of the proudest days of antiquity, when the Roman and the Spartan matrons were ever ready to surrender life in their country's service.
Immediately after the quoted part, this follows:
"The petitioner desires the donation to her of a small tract of land by Congress. With every feeling of respect and kindness for the memorialist, a majority of the committee deem it impossible for this Government to make the grant. They think such a grant without a precedent, and that it would violate the spirit of those compacts by which the public domain was ceded to this Government. It is the unanimous and anxious desire of the committee that the petitioner should receive all the benefits and recognition that this Government can bestow. What this Government cannot do is within the power of the American people. They feel at least an equal pride and glory with us in the name of America. Throughout our wide extended country, among all classes, this feeling is universal; and in the humblest cottage the poorest American feels that this name, the name of his beloved country, is a prouder title than any that adorns the monarch’s brow, and that if he has no other property, this name, with all its great and glorious associations with the past and hopes for the future, is an all-sufficient heritage to transmit to his children. This generous, patriotic, and enlightened people will take into their own hands the case of America Vespucci. They will procure for her that home which she desires among us. They will do ail that Congress is forbidden to do, and infinitely more than she asks or desires, and demonstrate to the world that the name of America, our country’s name, is dear to us all, and shall be honored, respected, and cherished in the person of the interesting exile from whose ancestor we derive the great and glorious title."
[1] S. Doc. No. 264, 25th Cong., 3rd Sess. (1839) https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/SERIALSET-00341_00_00-01...
I, personally, read into those final lines that she was, indeed, given land, but from private donors.
> Another of her admirers was Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, who presented America's petition to the Senate on Jan. 29, 1839. "She is without a country, without fortune, and without protection," the Missourian pleaded. "She asks that we grant her a corner of the land which bears the name of her glorious forebear, and for the right of citizenship among those who call themselves Americans".
> Benton did his best, but two committees ruled against the exile. Sen. Robert J. Walker of Mississippi explained that her requests were without precedent. He advised that the lady should take her case to the American public. “This generous, patriotic and enlightened people will do all that Congress is forbidden to do,” he promised.
> His speech touched off a rousing demonstration of faith and affection for the outcast. Senators, representatives and Supreme Court justices contributed varying sums of money to launch a national campaign to help her purchase the “corner” of land she desired. The drive under way, she embarked on a tour that took her to Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis, New Orleans, Cincinnati and Louisville. She was idolized everywhere. “Her path”, one report says, “was strewn with roses, open hands, and confiding hearts.” However, in the spring of 1840 she abruptly terminated her travels. She sailed for Europe, leaving behind the shocking announcement that she did not want the money raised for her because it was not “a national gift.”
So it seems that a group of political elites did privately raise money for her to purchase land, but she abruptly turned it down and returned to Europe for a year instead. Kind of an incredible story, really.
[1] http://fourth-millennium.net/cordwainer-vr/lady-who-sailed-t...
This is a new one on me. Maybe it could it have happened, but I very much doubt it. This seems to go back to the usual thing of "Native Americans were too dumb to build a civilization".
If anyone got to the Americas before people crossing the Atlantic, it would have been the Polynesians. That I could believe.
> Further, other discoveries of America have been credited to the Irish who had sailed to a land they called Iargalon, the land beyond the sunset, and to the Phoenicians who purportedly came here before the Norse.
I think his use of "it has been argued", "have been credited to", and "purportedly" in this context are not weaselly, and are fine in reference to unsubstantiated arguments that people have made. The author is clear though that the only two undisputed discoveries of the Americas prior to Columbus were by the Asian forebears of Native Americans and the Norse:
> They were of course preceded by the pre-historic Asian forebears of Native Americans, who migrated across some ice-bridge in the Bering Straits or over the stepping stones of the Aleutian Islands.
> the remains of an 11th-century Norse settlement in Newfoundland, excavated in the 1960s, that forms the only undisputed evidence of the first European presence in the New World.
No, it IS weaselly. Unless there is any substance to the argument at all, it's like saying "it has been argued that the earth is flat."
Maybe say "it has been argued without evidence" like journalists do /s
Similarly, in this article the author simply mentions - almost as an aside - that "a black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago, and influenced the development of Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations". It is a factually correct statement (in that it has indeed been argued) [1]. There are no other mentions of this theory in the article, no attempts made to substantiate or repudiate it, or build on it, and it's only tangentially related to the main point of the article.
Furthermore, in his closing the paragraph, the author says something that makes me believe he's skeptical about many of the alternative claims that he brings up:
> 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.
Why do you say that the author is being "weaselly" here? What is his ulterior motive? And what other contextual evidence do you have that the author intends for us to take the statement at anything more than face value - that it's an alternative version of history that some people believe to be true?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_con...
I don't know what other arguments would make an impression on you, so why don't we just drop it?
* Mentioning that a belief exists is not the same thing as endorsing it. And arguing that they are the same is an affront to open and rational discourse.
* A major point of the article is that many historical claims are fiction that are based more on speculation, and political, cultural, or national agendas than hard evidence. So it goes double that mentioning a historical claim in this context is not an endorsement of its accuracy.
* The fact that people are so hung up that they would call the author a weasel based on the mere mention that "a black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago" - regardless of the context in which it is used - says a whole lot more about their own beliefs and biases than the author's. They are basically reinforcing the whole point of the article.
Or, to quote the article one last time:
> 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.
https://sci-hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-02...
Regardless, in most languages and countries, it is just "America" so that ship has sailed. Either way, America or United States, everyone knows which country is being referenced.
Analogous would be calling the USA “Texas”.
Calling the UK “Britain” is a much more direct comparison.
United States of America -> America
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland -> Britain
(United States of) America -> America
(Federal Republic of) Germany -> Germany
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern) Ireland -> Ireland
Boris Johnson: "If I am ever asked on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman..."
Rupert Brooke: "If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England."
Johnson is giving London as an example of a place in the UK. It is a very apposite example because it is where any power the police are given would be used most heavily (as stop and search is). He is using the the phrase "freeborn Englishman" to evoke associations with the use of the phrase that is far older than the UK. The phrase in its literal sense also excludes women and serfs and I do not think Johnson is aiming for that.
Brooke was writing a poem. He was evoking an effect and a particular sense of place and identify. "England" evokes different associations and and a different emotional response to "the united Kingdom". It is more local, and cosy, and has visual associations (the "English countryside" vs "the Scottish countryside" for example).
England is a country (part of Britain, together with Wales & Scotland)
The United Kingdom [of Great Britain and Northern Ireland], is an alliance of countries.
I'd hope that most citizens of the UK wouldn't regard these as interchangeable, and just because an Englishman waxes poetic about England doesn't mean he's unaware that it's part of the UK, etc.
No, it is not. The UK is ONE sovereign state/country, the rest are states/provinces/whatever, even tho some people living in this country might disagree and wish to separate themselves to become a full sovereign state.
Would have tried, perhaps.
But of course Dutch people don't really care what foreigners call the country, they can use whatever name they come up with it doesn't matter. Although it's nice that Germany gets it right. These kind of arguments speak to the fragile ego of some nations.
I also now hear America now from younger people (< age 30) and people now also use the "word" y'all too.
Even US football which never got a second look even Canadian football was mocked (two of nine total teams had the same name) now people have Superbowl parties.
Culture creep is causing USization more rapidly in Canada.
As a generally "white" person (of roughly western European descent), I will happily use any set of labels that keeps people from glaring at me. I feel pretty strongly that unpleasant language is a symptom of prejudice, not a cause. If changing words could change hearts and minds, I think we would have seen it happen by now.
This culminated in an epic television moment when an American interviewer asked Kris Akabusi, a black British 400m runner, what his victory meant "as a British African-American".
Eh, this is a little inaccurate - I don't think anyone but white people worked themselves up about this, and the distinction between "black" and "african american" was made because Americans with slave ancestry are not the only people who have dark skin color. It's also still in use and hasn't gone anywhere. AFAIK you've always been able to refer to a black person as black without offense, but of course, people have used that as a mild slur or with insulting connotations.
This was a hard push from white people toward other white people, about being offended on the behalf of black people. Black people have never liked the term African-American, and most don't use it. The reasons why white people on either side of the "debate" wouldn't notice this or would operate as if this weren't true are left as an exercise for the reader.
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1991: Poll Says Most Blacks Prefer 'Black' to 'African-American' https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/29/us/poll-says-most-blacks-...
2021: New Poll Shows Black People Prefer to be Called Simply ‘Black’ Over ‘African American,’ Hispanics Aren’t Keen to Newly-Formed Label ‘LatinX’ https://atlantablackstar.com/2021/08/11/new-poll-shows-black...
Here's a stupid article pretending that black people who still call themselves black in 2012 are space aliens or Amish, when there was never a point when black people didn't call themselves black: Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American' https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna46264191
Doesn't matter because that's not the point of my comment. The person I was responding to said:
> and the distinction between "black" and "african american" was made because Americans with slave ancestry are not the only people who have dark skin color.
My point is there was no distinction. At the time, in the US, those two terms referred to the same group of people. The push was to replace "black" with "African-American", not to use whichever term was more appropriate.
It’s an outsider combining in and saying “no, people can’t call you black” [or “Indian”] that is weirdly controlling and oppressive.
I am quite surprised that "Indian" is still acceptable in a country as sensitive about vocabulary as the US - its very much a colonial term. Then again "America" is, if named after Vespucci, is named after a slave owner and trader which does not seem to bother anyone (which is odd in an age when other things are being renamed).
I prefer "Native American" because, as British Sri Lankan (lived in both countries) Indian just has a different meaning to me.
> It’s an outsider combining in and saying “no, people can’t call you black” [or “Indian”] that is weirdly controlling and oppressive.
Yes, and we have that problem in the UK too. I find it very amusing that South Asians (particularly those actually in South Asia who are not much subject to western influence) will use phrases about themselves (e.g. "coloured") that would shock westerners.
We are also getting a lot more policing of language in the UK. It is actually quite oppressive, and disadvantages recent immigrants (and people from the wrong background) who do not know the right vocabulary.
Well that's the thing, you're not indigenous American, so you don't really get a say. Neither am I, btw. We're getting into moral discussions here, but if anyone should be granted one thing, it's the right to choose for themselves what group name they prefer. There wasn't, generally speaking, a common name in the indigenous American languages for the people of the americas, separate and distinct from the word for "people" which would have included the invading conquistadors from Europe. So “Indian” was as good as any, even though it was already the name of a people halfway around the world. [Although to be pedantic, it was meant to refer to the people of modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, and South-East Asia, not the Indian subcontinent. He thought at first he'd landed in Indonesia. Then he thought maybe Japan or China. He was a confused dude.]
It is right and proper that people should be able to decide for themselves what they want others to call them, and the indigenous people of the United States prefer to be called "Indians." The clunky term "Native American" was repurposed from a very different meaning to apply to Indians during the civil rights era, not by Indians themselves but by misguided activists and civil rights fighters who patronizingly thought they were doing tribes a favor by decolonizing their language. Ironically, the very act of mandating what terms they should use to describe themselves is peak colonialism.
If you go to tribal land and talk to the people living there--and I've had some wonderful conversations with people on the Hopi and Navajo reservations--they'll tell you that they prefer that you use their specific tribal name to identify them, but if you must group multiple tribes together then they prefer the term Indian, they've always referred to themselves as Indian, and they have no desire to change that, thank you very much.
- Russell Means, a Lakota activist, wrote in his 1998 essay, “I Am An American Indian, Not a Native American!” https://compusci.com/indian/
See also: https://www.fair360.com/medialib/uploads/2020/11/Native-Amer...
Once people saw that slaves and their descendants might be compensated in some way, or treated in a special way by government in lieu of compensation, they all wanted to become black. So after 1965 (the end of legal segregation in the US) they started hyphenating their ethnicities, or in the case of "hispanic," making up new ethnicities from whole cloth.
Compensation for slavery isn't "free stuff." You should give up your inheritance.
There are two continents, "North America" and "South America". To refer to the whole, you pluralize it as "the Americas".
Major places (and IMO it is a mark of the importance of a place) have different names in different languages. London does, Germany does, Japan does,....
Personally I don’t care what you call us in other languages, but in English it’s just “Americans”.
It might (not) surprise you to learn that what I call Cyprus is called "Zypern" by Germans and there are a lot more copper related names for the place.
Closer to my home, what I call London is Londres in France and London in German. The city in question was named by a bunch of what would become Italians (Romans) - Londinium was named by a murderous bunch of colonial invaders.
I have insinuated an awful lot from your comment and "replied" to those insinuations as best I can.
I am somebody and I use the term America routinely to describe the USA and the term Americas for the entire continent. North America is US + CA and Southern America is Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay and ... oh there are rather a lot more. There is also Central America which is the countries that join the north to the south.
I get that you have an axe to grind about which America is which and who owns which name. I have some sympathy for Brazil getting pissed off about Amazon (the company) too.
I try to understand all points of view - its quite interesting.
I never met a Brazilian that cares about it tho. There was a big national uproar a few decades ago when some Japanese company tried to patent the use of the Açaí fruit and trademark.
now about America and Americans. South Americans and North Americans are as much "Americans" as Northern and Southern Europeans are Europeans. Calling themselves THE Americans and the rest latinos (what do they call Canadians? I guess just Canadians) lowers our history and culture. North-Americans or US-Americans or whatever-Americans shouldn't be the ones defining who is American, who is Latino-American, who is Native-American, Afro-American. Not surprising, there isn't a Euro-American tag.
"Latinos" are what Spanish and (to a much lesser extent) Portuguese-speaking people living in the USA call themselves (and their relatives still living in other Latin-American countries). They seem to prefer it to "Hispanics". And the term only applies to people speaking Latin-derived languages (i.e., Spanish and Portuguese). So the people living in Belize, for instance, are not "Latinos" at all.
Similarly, African-Americans were named that way by themselves, to distinguish themselves from the majority white Americans, since they had a very different and unique culture and history. It wasn't some kind of pejorative they were stuck with by outsiders; they came up with it on their own because they were tired of being called "negroes", "colored", or much worse.
You seem to have a very warped perception of who thinks what, and as the other poster said, you obviously have an ax to grind.
People in the USA are called "Americans" because it's (part of) the name of their country, and there's no other convenient and pronounceable demonym to describe them, and there's no other country in the world that has the word "America" in it.
In my part of the world (Santa Fe, New Mexico), people of "direct" Spanish descent prefer the term "Hispano" to differentiate themselves from both Hispanics (n-th cousins who might still arrive here, but did so after several generations south of Mexico City), and Latinos which is broadly equivalent to Hispanic.
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/09/12/u-...
Pan-ethnic terms are the creatures of demographers, political scientists and others of the social sciences. We don’t really need that crap and it’s just there to make their jobs easier.
There is another demonym, although much less used:
USian.
It's quite convenient and pronounceable. Some HNers use it:
>https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Also see the Wikipedia definition of the word you used - demonym:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonym
The first two sentences at the above link:
>A demonym (/ˈdɛmənɪm/; from Ancient Greek δῆμος (dêmos) 'people, tribe' and ὄνυμα (ónuma) 'name') or gentilic (from Latin gentilis 'of a clan, or gens')[1] is a word that identifies a group of people (inhabitants, residents, natives) in relation to a particular place.[2] Demonyms are usually derived from the name of the place (hamlet, village, town, city, region, province, state, country, and continent).
Thanks also to all USians that commented. As a fellow American, I think we should be more United! :)
Hah!
I find it a fascinating word and a way of precisely naming to keep the “American” word to be more broadly applicable, at least in theory
Among Spanish speakers the word is used, but it is a cultural not geographic term. There are ISA and Canadian Latinos too.
I have never seen anybody pissed about that one. But then, I have never seen anybody insisting that "Amazon" means the company and the geographic region better shut-up and forfeit its name.
Much as yours is called la República Federativa do Brasil, which you call Brasil for short. Do you ever call it the RF I wonder? Real question, I have no idea.
Whatever you call America, the country, in your language, that's up to you. The Chinese call us 美國, the few of us aware of that are not even slightly bothered by it. Your language, your rules.
You have no right, and no ability, to dictate to Americans how we refer to ourselves and our nation, in our main (but not official) language. We do not care what your name for us is, and we do not care at all what you think about how we refer to ourselves.
For the record, in America we do not think of the Americas as one continent, but rather, two. So Brazilians, as we style you, are South American. Canadians, Mexicans, and Americans, are North Americans. If we need for some reason to refer to the people of both continents we might say "people of the Americas" but this doesn't come up much, just as we might say "Old Worlders" to refer to the megacontinent of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The chip you carry around on your shoulder does you no credit at all. The notion that because we use a word in the name of our nation to refer to ourselves in some way denigrates the other inhabitants of the two continents, North and South America, which happen to share that word with the name of our nation...
That is 100% a you problem, not an us problem, and not a US problem. Get over it. Or don't.
I appreciate Marcou's map (1890) being a historical recreation of that region of Nicaragua, but I would have expected this tribal name to be an anchoring notation throughout early maps of the region from the beginning. But maybe I'm missing something.
This line gave me synchronicity shivers. There's a recent SMBC comic that's been linked a few times on HN recently: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/arthur. The other day it sent me down a minor rabbit hole reading about Brittany, where I stumbled upon this map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany#/media/File:Britonia6.... I (a Brit) thought that "Armorica" sounds exactly like "America" and looked up the meaning: "place by the sea". I realised I'd never looked up the origin of the name America but this must be it. So I googled around and was disappointed when I found the story about Vespucci. Cool to know that it's still somewhat in dispute.
It's the idea of what being an American stands for that matters, not the origin of the word.
Also, I found most of the comments here equally educational and informative!
“Why Do We Call It 'America'?" [C]. American Heritage 68.7.”
That links to an essay at https://www.americanheritage.com/why-do-we-call-it-america which says in an editor’s note that “Portions of this essay originally appeared in The American Voice.” The americanheritage.com version looks very similar to this one.
(Seems likely to me that it was written earlier, or the most recent reference wouldn't have been 2001, but that's only a hunch.)
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=related:KEG9SnudRCsJ:...