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Dictionary definition: America
- Article from:
- A New Dictionary of Eponyms
- Author:
Copyright© A New Dictionary of Eponyms 1997, originally published by Oxford University Press 1997. (Hide copyright information)
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America, American
The injustice of naming two continents after Amerigo Vespucci (1451–1512) can no longer be rectified. And we cannot justify excluding Canada, the second-largest country in area in the world, from the appellation America. By the same token,
America, the gem of the ocean
is equally faulty. It should have been
Columbia
.
Controversy concerning the naming of America may never be resolved because who did what and when is not subject to historic proof. Amerigo Vespucci, originally a Florentine navigator, claimed he made four trips— in 1497, 1499, 1501, and 1503-to the New World, then known as the Mundus Novus (a term that first appeared in Vespucci's letters ...