{"id":25174,"date":"2019-10-15T11:00:58","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=25174"},"modified":"2019-10-15T11:01:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T10:01:00","slug":"how-did-america-come-to-be-called-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=25174","title":{"rendered":"How did America come to be called America?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This is an interesting letter in the &#8220;Guardian&#8221; newspaper:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I fear Thomas Eaton (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2019\/oct\/12\/which-european-country-did-the-uk-invade-on-10-may-1940-the-weekend-quiz\">Weekend Quiz<\/a>, 12 October) is giving further credence to \u201cfake news\u201d from 1507, when a German cartographer was seeking the derivation of \u201cAmerica\u201d and hit upon the name of Amerigo Vespucci, an obscure Florentine navigator. Derived from this single source, this made-up derivation has been copied ever after.<\/p><p>The fact is that Christopher Columbus visited&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/iceland\">Iceland<\/a>&nbsp;in 1477-78, and learned of a western landmass named \u201cMarkland\u201d. Seeking funds from King Ferdinand of Spain, he told the king that the western continent really did exist, it even had a name \u2013 and Columbus adapted \u201cMarkland\u201d into the Spanish way of speaking, which requires an initial vowel \u201cA-\u201d, and dropped \u201c-land\u201d substituting \u201c-ia\u201d.<\/p><p>Thus \u201cA-mark-ia\u201d, ie \u201cAmerica\u201d. In Icelandic, \u201cMarkland\u201d may be translated as \u201cthe Outback\u201d \u2013 perhaps a fair description.<\/p><p>See Graeme Davis, Vikings in America (Birlinn, 2009).<br><strong>Colin Moffat<\/strong><br><em>Kingston upon Thames, London<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is an interesting letter in the &#8220;Guardian&#8221; newspaper: I fear Thomas Eaton (Weekend Quiz, 12 October) is giving further credence to \u201cfake news\u201d from 1507, when a German cartographer was seeking the derivation of \u201cAmerica\u201d and hit upon the name of Amerigo Vespucci, an obscure Florentine navigator. Derived from this single source, this made-up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25174"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25176,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25174\/revisions\/25176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}