Ask an American who their country is named after and they will probably either look at you as if you have gone mad or the more educated ones will say Amergido Vespucci. However, as we all know, it was the British that invented the world and named everything in it and America is no different.
In fact, the whole Columbus story is hogwash too. Many people had been to the States long before one of history's biggest frauds.
America is derived from Richard Amerike, a Welsh merchant from Bristol, who is believed to have financed John Cabot's voyage of discovery from England to Newfoundland in 1497 as found in some documents from Westminster Abbey a few decades ago. Supposedly, Bristol fishermen had been visiting the coast of North America for at least a century before Columbus' voyage and Waldseemüller's maps are alleged to incorporate information from the early English journeys to North America.
It stands to reason too - you don't name a country or place after someone's first name (unless they are of British Royalty of course). And the reason for all this? For the emerging United States, Cabot made a poor national hero.
A song by Jamaican artiste Burning Spear about Christopher Columbus sums it up really - it is called 'A Damn Blasted Liar.'
And while we are on Columbus - he wasn't the first to claim the Earth is round. In fact, it was commonly accepted for many centuries that the Earth was not flat and it was only only the uneducated or super odd that believed it was.
Labels: James G