Languagehat on “America”:<\/p>\n
\n\tI presume we all know about the first appearance of the word America<\/em> on the Waldseem\u00fcller map<\/a> of 1507; what I, at any rate, didn’t know was that the text of the map and accompanying book<\/a>, and hence the coining of the word, is thought to be the work of Waldseem\u00fcller’s friend Matthias Ringmann<\/a>. […] I offer “How America got its name<\/a>: The suprising story of an obscure scholar, an adventurer\u2019s letter, and a pun,” a lively Boston Globe<\/em> piece by Toby Lester. A sample:<\/p>\n
\n\t\tThe author, for example,
\n\t\tdemonstrates a familiarity with ancient Greek, a language that Ringmann
\n\t\tknew well and that Waldseem\u00fcller did not. He also incorporates snatches
\n\t\tof classical verse, a literary tic of Ringmann\u2019s. The one contemporary
\n\t\tpoet quoted in the text, too, is known to have been a friend of
\n\t\tRingmann.<\/p>\n\n\t\tWaldseem\u00fcller the cartographer, Ringmann the writer: This division of
\n\t\tduties makes sense, given the two men\u2019s areas of expertise. And,
\n\t\tindeed, they would team up in precisely this way in 1511, when
\n\t\tWaldseem\u00fcller printed a new map of Europe. In dedicating that map,
\n\t\tWaldseem\u00fcller noted that it came accompanied by “an explanatory summary
\n\t\tprepared by Ringmann.”\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n\t\tThis question of authorship is important because whoever wrote “Introduction to Cosmography” almost certainly coined the name America.
\n\t\tHere again, I would suggest, the balance tilts in the favor of Ringmann,
\n\t\twho regularly entertained himself by making up words, punning in
\n\t\tdifferent languages, and investing his writing with hidden meanings. In
\n\t\tone 1511 essay, he even mused specifically about the naming of
\n\t\tcontinents after women.\n\t\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\nLink<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Languagehat on “America”: I presume we all know about the first appearance of the word America on the Waldseem\u00fcller map of 1507; what I, at any rate, didn’t know was that the text of the map and accompanying book, and hence the coining of the word, is thought to be the work of Waldseem\u00fcller’s friend … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"koromo_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-blog","koromo-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/11743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/11743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}