I think about the alternate universe where they went with the mapmaker's last name and not his first name and now we all live in the United States of Vespugia and people are "Proud to be a Vespugian" and so forthhttps://twitter.com/CelticAnarchy/status/1301448481903718400 …
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I guess "Vesputia" is a more likely Anglicization of "Vespucci" but whatever
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I never even considered where that name might've come from but that sounds like an absolutely amazing bit of history
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Replying to @NarandiaOwl
Yeah it's this whole thing -- an alternate name for America is "Columbia", and indeed many places in America and things associated with America are still named that today But even back in the 1500s people started saying Columbus didn't deserve the credit he got
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Replying to @arthur_affect @NarandiaOwl
They said the credit for "discovering the New World" should go to the first explorer who actually understood he was in a different continent when he went there and didn't keep on insisting he'd just gone all the way around to Asia
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Replying to @arthur_affect @NarandiaOwl
Hence giving the credit to Amerigo Vespucci, who is now mostly remembered just for this fact
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Replying to @arthur_affect @NarandiaOwl
Shouldn't it be Leifrland, then? (And even before him, and utterly ignoring the people who came through the Beringia land bridge and their descendants, it's been pretty decently shown there were Basque fishermen visiting on occasion, IIRC.)
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Well it *should* be a patchwork of different names the Native nations had for their own countries and whatever catchall name for "the New World" should've been something they decided on themselves but hey that's not what happened
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