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The term mainland United States is sometimes used synonymously with continental United States, but technically refers only to those parts of states connected to the landmass of North America, thereby excluding not only Hawaii and overseas insular areas, but also islands which are part of continental states but separated from the mainland, such ...
The earliest known use of the name "America" dates to 1505, when German poet Matthias Ringmann used it in a poem about the New World. [2] The word is a Latinized form of the first name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass, rather than the eastern limit of Asia.
Map showing the source languages/language families of state names. The fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, the five inhabited U.S. territories, and the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands have taken their names from a wide variety of languages. The names of 24 states derive from indigenous languages of the Americas and one from Hawaiian.
Zealandia (/ z iː ˈ l æ n d i ə /), also known as the New Zealand continent or Tasmantis, is a nearly submerged continental fragment that sank after breaking away from Australia 60–85 Ma (million years) ago, and most of it (93%) remains submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean.
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The term "United States," when used in the geographic sense, refers to the contiguous United States (sometimes referred to as the Lower 48, including the District of Columbia not as a state), Alaska, Hawaii, the five insular territories of Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and minor outlying possessions. [1]
The terms "contiguous United States" (48 adjoining states in the continent of North America which does not include Alaska) or "continental United States" (any U.S. state that is part of the North American continent which includes Alaska) are widely used instead, despite including adjacent islands on the continental shelf in both definitions. [3]
The United States of America is a federal republic [1] consisting of 50 states, a federal district (Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States), five major territories, and various minor islands. [2] [3] Both the states and the United States as a whole are each sovereign jurisdictions. [4]