DATE=10-10-2003

TYPE=Special English Feature

NUMBER=7-29045

TITLE=SPECIAL ENGLISH AMERICAN MOSAIC #943-Columbus Day

BYLINE=Nancy Steinbach

TELEPHONE=619-2585

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Arditti

CONTENT=

HOST:

Our question this week comes by e-mail from China. A listener asks why America is not named after Christopher Columbus, the first European to find the New World.

This is a good time to answer that question. Monday is Columbus Day in the United States. Columbus Day is observed on the second Monday in October. The holiday honors the first visit to America by Columbus in fourteen-ninety-two. Yet the land is named for someone else. Here is the story.

Christopher Columbus visited the New World three times. Yet he never recognized that he was outside Asia. He always believed that he had found the Indies. He called the people "Indians."

His voyages were important, though. They opened the area to others. One of these was an Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci.

In fourteen-ninety-nine, Amerigo Vespucci made his first trip to what is now known as South America. He named many areas. And he made important improvements to navigation during his trip.

Vespucci made another trip a few years later. That was when he recognized that he was not in India, but on a separate continent. He confirmed this by following the coast of South America as far south as he could.

Amerigo Vespucci wrote letters about his explorations. They described the people he found and told how they lived. The letters were published in many languages and widely read in Europe.

In fifteen-oh-seven, a German mapmaker named Martin Waldseemuller printed a map with a land he called "America." He named it after Amerigo Vespucci. Waldseemuller sold copies of that map all over Europe. People started to use the name America. Later, it was also used to describe the area discovered to the north. The last known copy of that map, by the way, was recently bought by the Library of Congress.

Some history experts think these areas of the New World should have been named for Christopher Columbus. But others say it was right to honor Amerigo Vespucci. After all, he first recognized these lands as a separate, new part of the world.