The History of America's Naming: From Vespucci to Waldseemuller

This essay explores the historical process behind the naming of America, tracing the origins from the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci to the creation of the Waldseemuller map. It highlights the roles of Matthias Ringmann and other key figures in the dissemination of the name 'America'. The essay discusses the significance of Waldseemuller's map in presenting the Americas as a distinct continent and how the name spread. It also examines the map's rediscovery and its impact on understanding the historical context. The essay references key publications and research, providing a comprehensive overview of the naming of the American continent.

Running head: PUTTING AMERICA ON THE MAP
PUTTING AMERICA ON THE MAP
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note:

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1. The news was first reached to most of the Europeans in the letters of Amerigo Vespucci,
who is a Florentine merchant. However in 1504 a copy of the New World letter fell into
the hands of an Alsatian scholar and poet named Matthias Ringmmann. In the book when
Ringmann came across the New World letter, when he was immersed in a careful study
of Ptolemy’s Geography, and he recognized that Vespucci, unlike Columbus, appeared to
have sailed south right off the edge of the world that Ptolemy had mapped. Knowing this
Ringmann was thrilled and he printed his own version of the New World to On the
Southern Share Recently discovered by the King of Portugal, referring to Vespucci’s
sponsor, King Manuel. Therefore in this segment it is showed that Ringmann identifies
the name of the new land mass after Amerigo Vespucci.
2. The name America came after Amerigo Vespucci who was a navigator that traveled to
the “the new world” as referred earlier. In 1507, a German cartographer, Martin
Waldseemuller, chose make a new map which included the new world. The name
“America” spread quickly after Vespucci’s letters were published and read by Martin
Waldseemuller, who was an noted geographer and Mathias Ringmann, a schoolmaster.
After they read the account of Vespucci’s travels in “Quatre Navigations d’ Americ
Vespuc,” they decided to include Vespucci’s voyage into the treatise. Ringmann had a lot
to do with the distribution of this specific name as after Vespucci declare “ We do not see
why the name of the man of genius, Amerigo, who has discovered them, should not be
given to these lands as Europe and Asia have adopted the names of women” and hence
therefore when the word spread then the letter came into being and that is how the name
of “America” spread quickly among the people.

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3. The large map of Waldeesmuller was the most exciting product of threat research effort;
the data was included during the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages of 1501-1502 to
the New World. Waldseemuller produced no other maps after the Carta Marina. During
the decades that followed, copies of the 1507 map were discarded in order to up to date
and make a better printed maps, but by 1570 the map had all but disappeared, however
one copy did survive, however, sometimes between 1515 and 1517, the Nuremberg
geographer and mathematician Johannes Schoner acquired a copy and bound it into a
covered folio that he kept in his reference library, but by accident he died (Schwartz,
Seymour). It was again found by accident, as happens so often with lost treasures. Finally
Fischer received the map and he began examining the map in the folio and he took the
news of his discovery straight to his mentor, the renowned Innsbruck geographer Franz
Ritter von Wieser. However the map was up for sale during 400th anniversary but after
the two World Wars and Cold War’s the map went into sleep. However in 2003 after
years of negotiation with the owners of Wolfegg Castle and the German government the
Library of Congress acquired it for $10 million. Thus this is how the map of
Waldeesmuller was discovered.
4. The Waldseemuller map is significant for presenting the Americas as its own continent,
but the Americas as its own continent, however this famous for another reason as well. It
was on this map the new continent was first labeled, and the name “America” was
selected by Ringmann and Waldeesmuller. It helped the world to understand how the
map has brought a lot of ethnicity and dignity with it (Unger, Richard).
5. The unnamed authors of the book, Introduction to Cosmography, describes the coastline
of Vespucci as being a continent distinct from Asia, surrounded on all four sides by

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ocean. This book helped a lot to understand the choice of the name America. The text of
the Cosmographia appears to result from the thoughts and discussions of three individuals
mainly, Lud, Waldseemuller and Ringman. The invention of the name America is most
likely the fruit of their close collaboration, to be put to the credit of this group of scholar.
This book has helped a lot a in order to understand the authentication of the map and how
it came into being (Lee, Christina).

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References:
Altosole, M., et al. "Simulation study on the interaction between sailing and motor propulsion to
optimize performance and control of the tall ship amerigo Vespucci." Proc. of the 15th Int.
Congress of the International Maritime Association of the Mediterranean A Coruña. 2014.
Anderson, Margo J. The American census: A social history. Yale University Press, 2015.
Lee, Christina H. "The early modern global south in print: textual form and the production of
human difference as knowledge." (2017): 1-3.
Schwartz, Seymour. "PUTTING AMERICA ON THE MAP." N.p., 2007. Print.
Unger, Richard W. "Seeing the World Anew: The radical vision of Martin Waldseemuller's 1507
& 1516 world maps." (2013): 477-478.

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