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One of the most intriguing tales is how America, which Senator McCain once called a European power (shortly before the 2000 election), is inadvertently named for African people (not to mention the fact that Europa was also an African woman). I say "inadvertently" because in fact America is named for two men, neither of whom is African as far as I can tell. One is the Italian Vespucci Amerigo, and the other is a wealthy Welshman named Richard Amerik. America was simultaneously named after two men who did not know each other. The name they gave it means (('Land of Africans')). Isn't life stranger than fiction? 8D

One of the most intriguing tales is how America, which Senator McCain once called a European power (shortly before the 2000 election), is inadvertently named for African people (not to mention the fact that Europa was also an African woman). I say "inadvertently" because in fact America is named for two men, neither of whom is African as far as I can tell. One is the Italian Vespucci Amerigo, and the other is a wealthy Welshman named Richard Amerik. America was simultaneously named after two men who did not know each other. The name they gave it means (('Land of Africans')). Isn't life stranger than fiction? 8D

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*America 1507, "the western hemisphere, North and South America," in Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller's treatise "Cosmographiae Introductio," from Modern Latin Americanus, after Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) who made two trips to the New World as a navigator and claimed to have discovered it. His published works put forward the idea that it was a new continent, and he was first to call it Novus Mundus "New World." Amerigo is more easily Latinized than Vespucci (Latin Vesputius, which might have yielded place-name Vesputia). The sense in English naturally was restricted toward the British colonies, then the United States.

The man's name Amerigo is Germanic, said to derive from Gothic Amalrich, literally "work-ruler." The Old English form of the name has come down as surnames Emmerich, Emery, etc. The Italian fem. form merged into Amelia.*

Go home shlomo, you're drunk