United States of America - Name

The earliest known use of the name America is from 1507, when a globe and a large map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller in Saint-Die-des-Vosges described the combined continents of North and South America. Although the origin of the name is uncertain, the most widely held belief is that expressed in an accompanying book, Cosmographiae Introductio, which explains it as a feminized version of the Latin name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (Americus Vespucius); in Latin, the other continents' names were all feminine. Vespucci theorized, correctly, that Christopher Columbus, on reaching islands in the Caribbean Sea in 1492, had come not to India but to a "New World".

The Americas were also known as Columbia, after Columbus, prompting the name District of Columbia for the land set aside as the U.S. capital. Columbia remained a popular name for the United States until the early twentieth century, when it fell into relative disuse; but it is still used poetically and appears in various names and titles. A female personification of the country is also called Columbia; she is similar to Britannia. Columbus Day, a holiday in the U.S. and other countries in the Americas, commemorates Columbus's October 1492 landing.

The term "United States of America" was first used officially in the Declaration of Independence, adopted on 4 July 1776. On 15 November 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first of which stated "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'" The adjectival and demonymic forms for the United States are American, a point of controversy among some.

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