Americans are citizens of a nameless country!

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Most people refer to the country that lies between Canada and Mexico as either:

US/United States, USA/United States of America

None of these identify this country for the following reasons:

Brazil is composed of 'States' and is located in 'The Americas'

Mexico is also composed of 'States' so even 'The United States of North America' is inapporpriate.

United States (of what?)

I suppose there might be a claim to the name America from Amerigo Vespucci, but it is as absurd to call the country between Canada and Mexico 'America' as it would be to call France (or any other European country) 'Europe'.

What are your thoughts? (wherever you come from )

It might be interesting to know that the full name of Mexico is "United Mexican States".

United States of Corruptia.

United States of WASPia.

United States of England....although I don't think many englanders what like to be associated with us.

I don't know, I'm not too crazy about the idea of the word Amerigo since it sounds too much like a person's name. Aha America!

Who discovered America?

-"In 1497, the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci discovered a new country, and it was named America by the map maker, Martin Waldseemuller.

However, it was later realized that Amerigo’s friend, the Spanish explorer, Christopher Columbus, had been there a few years earlier in 1492. But it was too late to rename the country Columbia.

-More recently evidence has appeared showing that in fact it was the Chinese Admiral Cheng Ho who discovered America in 1421.

-Viking burial grounds still exist in New Foundland: "About 1001 AD, Leif Erikson, known as Leif the Lucky, sailed farther south, down the coast to Baffin Island, Labrador and on down to northern Newfoundland where he established a settlement at a place called L'ans aux Meadows."

-The remains of Roman roads have been discovered in the region of New Foundland.

So, who really discovered this continent?

I'm sure there were many indigenous exploreres that found the American continents. Trouble is most of it hasn't been well recorded since 1492.

This probably has to do partially with Spain becoming a naval superpower at the time. Political. Soon, Portugal and Holland followed in the naval dominance, internationally, and influenced the steering and recording of a Eurocentric history. A great book that discusses this is Spice: The History of a Temptation

Cool, thank you for the link.

I've often wondered if much of America's earliest evidence of other settlers were intentionally destroyed by Europes greatest powers, though that may sounds as outrageous as many of my conspiracy theories lol.

I am also a conspiracy theorist... but this one sounds somewhat plausible considering what we do know of our World history.

While most people think that "Mexico" is the official name of the country, it is actually called "Estados Unitos Mexicanos" in official formal parlance.

As for us Americans, we use the names "United States" and "America" fairly interchangeably (some differences noted below. "United States of America" is the name used in more formal circumstances and is much less used in day-to-day communication than the previous two even though it is the official name that the founding fathers enshrined.

Furthermore, the use of "America" is sometimes used to describe the ideals and values of the aforementioned nation while the term "United States" is used more to describe the physical being of the nation.

~CKings317

No, it doesn't. Other settlers from where? Only a subset of European nations were into blue water ocean travel at the time. There was plenty of sea and coastal shipping around the rim of the Indian Ocean and the China Seas (and Zheng He, everyone's favourite Chinese admiral may have gotten as far as the Cape of Good Hope) but the only people crossing the Atlantic and/or Pacific during the early colonisation periods of the US were from Europe.

America were the wealthy is above the law

I've never really thought of it, that way, but I guess that would be right. States that are united.

That is speculative. There are no artifacts that establish that claim with certainty.

ruveyn

Long before any of those people got here (I'm in America/U.S.), it was discovered by a bunch of people from what is now Siberia who walked across the then-crossable Bering Strait. They walked into what is now Alaska (a state not particularly well united with the other American states), down through what is now Canada and they and their ancestors kept going South through the entire land mass. I have no idea why they don't commonly get credit for discovering it even though they were the first humans to set foot on the land. On the one hand they didn't make written records of their discovery. On the other hand, making such a record would have required them to invent writing and apparently humans weren't ready for that yet when these people made their journey.

Last edited by Janissy on 08 Jul 2010, 11:29 am, edited 3 times in total.

double post

Maybe they just couldn't come up with a better name? Or they didn't want to use one of the names from the native languages?

The name 'Canada' means 'village' or 'settlement' in Laurentian. Another theory is that Spanish and Portugese explorers were unable to find gold, so they marked it on their maps as 'cá nada', 'acá nada'.

'Mexico' comes from the Nahuatl language, but it's meaning isn't known. A theory for the etymology of Mexico is that it means 'Place at the Center of the Lake Moon'. Another, Mēxihtli, the Aztec goddess of war, with Mexico meaning 'place where Mēxihtli lives'.

Either for sure is not really known. Those are just two theories for each.



I think Columbus was Italian.