[MR] BBC: How America Got Its Name

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

Today BBC Travel is offering a fascinating illustrated piece on how
American got its name.

It was all because of the first published map to depict the eastern shores
of what we now call North and South America. The map was printed in 1507,
and was the work of scholars assembled at St-Dié-des-Vosges in Lorraine
(now France) under the sponsorship of René II, Duke of Lorraine. A German
humanist named Matthias Ringmann was the lead author of a companion book to
the map, *Cosmographiae Introductio*. It was he who selected the name
"America" for the New World. He chose to honor Amerigo Vespucci, whom
Ringmann believed had visited mainland North America a year before Columbus
came ashore on his third (1497) voyage:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180702-the-epic-story-of-the-map-that-gave-america-its-name
.

More about St-Die-des-Voges and the map project is found at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Dié-des-Vosges .

A Wikipedia page about *Cosmographiae Introductio* itself is found at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmographiae_Introductio .

Consider for a moment that Ringmann could have called the New World
"Vespucci Land", as Firesign Theater lampooned on one of their albums.
Whew! Close call.

Yours Aye,

Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆