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America is also inscribed on the Paris Green Globe (or Globe vert) which has been attributed to Waldseemüller and dated to 1506–07: as well as the single name inscribed on the northern and southern parts of the New World, the continent also bears the inscription: America ab inuentore nuncupata (America, named after its discoverer). [14]
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.
Amerigo Vespucci (/ v ɛ ˈ s p uː tʃ i / vesp-OO-chee, [1] Italian: [ameˈriːɡo veˈsputtʃi]; 9 March 1454 – 22 February 1512) was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Florence for whom "America" is named.
The name "America" was first recorded in 1507. A two-dimensional globe created by Martin Waldseemüller was the earliest recorded use of the term. [14] The name was also used (together with the related term Amerigen) in the Cosmographiae Introductio, apparently written by Matthias Ringmann, in reference to South America. [15]
The meaning of the word American in the English language varies according to the historical, geographical, and political context in which it is used.American is derived from America, a term originally denoting all of the Americas (also called the Western Hemisphere), ultimately derived from the name of the Florentine explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (1451–1512).
Historia antipodum oder newe Welt, or History of the New World, by Matthäus Merian the Elder, published in 1631. The Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci is usually credited for coming up with the term "New World" (Mundus Novus) for the Americas in his 1503 letter, giving it its popular cachet, although similar terms had been used and applied before him.
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The first documented use of the phrase "United States of America" is a letter from January 2, 1776. Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, wrote to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp, seeking to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort.