#246 Vespuccia the Beautiful

I’ve often wondered how that small turn of fate left us with the beautiful name for the land if which we live. America. It wasn’t at all necessary that we would get it. No one in ancient Greek times talked about hitching up a bunch of slaves to a trireme and rowing to America. Atlantis maybe, away across the ocean, was where they wanted to be, wanted to be. And you know, even with that India mistake ol’ Columbus had a fair shot of having the western hemisphere continents end up as the eponymous Columbia. In fact, early in our nation’s history the name Columbia was seriously proposed. Instead, old Columbus ended up with a couple of colleges, a river, and a town in Ohio. Even so, Columbia would have been a better alternative than some—Cortez-ia, as an example or, Ponce de Leon-ica. There were plenty of explorers plying the western waves by the time Amerigo Vespucci began his journeys. But the name America stuck along with the name for its inhabitants, Indians, much to the consternation of the real Indians whom we even today distinguish by calling them “East Indians.”
But if you stop to think about it, how often is it we name something after someone’s first name. We go to Lincoln, Nebraska not Abraham, Nebraska. People live in Washington State, they only go to concerts in George. But I suppose in the old days they did things that way—you got your Maryland and your Elizabethtown, and yes, your Georgetown. But still, naming two continents and nicknaming the world’s largest superpower after the first name of some itinerant Italian self-promoter seems a bit of a stretch. I should be happy, if this guy had more political pull with cartographers, we could have ended up with his last name, Vespucci. Our fine land would be known as Vespuccia. Sounds like one of the lands in Gulliver’s Travels. We got your Lilliputia with little people bent on bureaucratic minutia, your 60 foot tall Brobdingnagians and your Vespuccia, where everyone runs each other down at Walmart Christmas sales.
What a change a name could make. We’d be the United States of Vespuccia. Sounds a lot more Italian. He’d be as Vespuccian as apple pie. We’d sing Vespuccia the Beautiful and God Bless Vespuccia. We’d have the North Vespuccian Free Trade Agreement, and its acronym would be hard to pronounce. NVFTA. There’d be Native Vespuccians and Latin Vespuccians and African Vespuccians The Guess Who would sing Vespuccian Woman, get away from me-ee. Chevrolet ads would say Chevy, the Heart of Vespuccia. There’d be the giant mega conglomerate financial institution Bank of Vespuccia. And people with slow dial-ups would curse V-O-L- Vespuccia On Line. You know, the more I think about the name change the more I think—
America, ya gotta love it.