Go see this exhibit if you're in the Twin Cities area anytime between now and the end of the year:
This is the first known map to use the name 'America' on any part of the North American land mass. It has its 500th birthday this year, having been printed in 1507 at a little monastery in what was then France, now Germany (I think I have that right!). For those with little 'American' history background, the name was adapted from the European explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who was a contemporary of Christopher Columbus. Martin Waldseemuller, the map's maker and a German monk & cartographer at the church of St. Die (SE France, SW Germany area), felt that Vespucci was the first explorer to realize that New World land mass was a new continent, NOT India or 'the Orient.' Henceforth Waldseemuller applied Vespucci's name to the map, not Columbus's, despite being familiar with the travels and tales of both explorers. Furthermore, Waldseemuller felt that naming the New World 'Vespucci' or 'Vespucia' would incite fear due to the meaning of the last name: wasps, bees, etc. (like a 'Vespa' modped). So the first name was adapted into the female, latinized version of Amerigo.
And that's the mini-version of how America got its name! But there's alot more fascinating facts to learn about the technology of printing this map, the academic book on cosmography that would have accompanied it (which the James Ford Bell Library also has a copy and is on display), and also the story of how Waldseemuller had a change of heart and later removed the name 'America' from his subsequent maps, but the name had already stuck among cartographers in 16th century Europe.
Go see it! Be amazed!
p.s. I got to help with the research of this map summer 2006 (last summer) under the direction of the Curator, Dr. Maggie Ragnow. :)
Details:
Where: James Ford Bell Library, 4th Floor Wilson Library, West Bank, Univ. of MN-TC, Mpls
When: October 1-December 31, 2007
Contact: 612/624-1528 or jfbell@umn.edu
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