How did a 1507 wall map give the Americas their name?
The mapmaker who put 'America' on the world named it after Vespucci, even though Vespucci's own account, printed in the same book, took the land to be part of Asia.
▶ Start the storyThe name came from a map. In April 1507, a German named Martin Waldseemüller published a printed wall map of the world, known as the first map to use the name America. He put the name on South America, and his accompanying book, the Cosmographiae Introductio, explained that it was bestowed in honor of the Italian Amerigo Vespucci. The map was meant to document and update the geographical knowledge gained from the discoveries of the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
It did something bolder than naming. It was the first map to show the Americas as a distinct landmass, clearly separated from Asia by the Pacific Ocean. That was a leap, because most mapmakers at the time still believed that the lands found by Columbus, Vespucci and others were part of the Indies of Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Pacific came in 1513, five to six years after the map was made.
Waldseemüller
- Used theory where knowledge was lacking
- Drew the Americas as separate from Asia
- Named South America 'America'
Portuguese and Spanish official maps
- Omitted all unexplored coastlines
- Their charts were guarded: the Cantino map was smuggled out of Portugal
The map also shows how hard it was to place the world's new coasts accurately. Even , which were easy to determine, were far off: Sierra Leone is placed south of the equator, and the Cape of Good Hope at 50 degrees south instead of 35. Placing was more difficult still.
Of the 1,000 copies printed, only one complete copy of the original is known to exist today. Rediscovered in 1901 in a German castle, it was bought by the US Library of Congress in 2001 for ten million dollars.
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Recap
A 1507 map named America after Vespucci and drew it as separate from Asia.
💡 A trick to remember it · One wall map, one bold name, and a blue ocean drawn before any European had recorded seeing it.
Surprising fact · The map showed the Pacific Ocean about five or six years before any European is recorded as seeing it.
Sources (1)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (15 claims) cites at least one of these.