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Amalric was the name which compacted the old ideal of heroism and leadership common to all Germanic tribes, the ideal that stands out most clearly in the character of Beowulf—the Amal of Sweden, Denmark, and Saxon England. It meant what the North European hero stories described,—“The man who ruled because he labored for the benefit of all.”

In Norman France this name was softened to Amaury. Thus, a certain theologian who was born in the twelfth century at Bène, near Chartres, is called indifferently Amalric of Bène or Amaury of Chartres. England in the thirteenth century could show no more commanding figure than Simon of Montfort l’Amaury, Earl of Leicester, to whom King Henry once said, “If I fear the thunder, I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world.” A Norman Amalric was that Earl Simon, creator of a new force, and in its outcome a democratic one, too, in English politics. J. R. Green says, “It was the writ issued by Earl Simon that first summoned the merchant and trader to sit beside the knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the parliament of the realm.” In Italy, after the Gothic invasion, the northern name suffered comparatively slight euphonic changes, which can be easily traced. As borne by a bishop of Como in 865 it became Amelrico or Amelrigo. But the juxtaposition of the two consonants “l” and “r” presented a difficulty in pronunciation which the Italians avoided: they changed “lr,” first, to double “r,” and then to a single “r.” Nevertheless, six hundred years after Bishop Amelrigo died, the Florentine merchant, explorer, and author—third son of Anastasio Vespucius, notary of Florence—usually retained the double “r” in his own signature, writing “Amerrigo Vespucci,” and, by the way, accenting his Gothic name on the penultimate (Ameri´go, not Ame´rigo).

The orthography of Amelric was still in this transitional stage in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. In Spain the name must have been rare, since it was often used alone to designate the Florentine during his residence in that country, the audit books in the archives of Seville containing entries in this form: “Ha de haber Amerigo.” There was, apparently, no other Amerigo or Amerrigo in the Spanish public service early in the sixteenth century.

We must look again toward the north for the scene of the next important change, and among the men of a northern race for its author. Martin Waldseemueller, a young German geographer at St. Dié, in the Vosgian Mountains, whose imagination had been stirred by reading, as news of the day, Amerigo’s account of his voyages to the New World, bestowed the name America upon the continental regions brought to light by the Florentine. It is not enough to say, with John Boyd Thacher (in his “Columbus,” Volume III.; compare also Thacher’s valuable “Continent of America”), that Waldseemueller “suggested” this designation. As editor of the Latin work, the “Cosmographiæ Introductio” (May 5, 1507), he stated most distinctly, with emphatic reiteration, his reasons for this name-giving; placed conspicuously in the margin the perfect geographical name, “America,” and at the end of the volume put Vespucci’s narrative. Further, on a large map of the world, separately published, he drew that fourth part of the earth “quarta orbis pars,” which was the “Introductio’s” novel feature, and marked it firmly “America.”

The contention of Professor von der Hagen (in his letter to Humboldt, published in 1835 in “Neues Jahrbuch der Berliner Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache,” Heft 1, pp. 13–17), that Waldseemueller was distinctly conscious of giving the new continent a name of Germanic origin, may appeal to enthusiastic Germanists, but the original text clearly opposes that conclusion. “Quia Americus invenit,” says the Introductio, “Americi terra sive America nuncupare licet.” But the case stands otherwise, when we ask why Europeans generally caught up the word, as a name appropriate to the new Terra Firma of vaguely intimated contours, but of defined and appalling difficulty—a vaster, untried field for the exercise of proved Amal ability. Its association with so many men before Vespucci certainly commended the name to northern taste.

We may be thankful that no one has succeeded in the various attempts that have been made to call our part of the world by the relatively very weak name Columbia, which signifies Land of the Dove. We may be thankful that “America” means so much more than “Europe”—in respect to which Meredith Townsend says, “The people of the ‘setting sun’—that seems to be the most probable explanation of the word Europe.” The “setting sun” is precisely the wrong thing. And if we wish to get somewhat nearer to the time of the name-giving of the Old World Continents, we shall find that Herodotus says, “Nor can I conjecture why, as the earth is one, it has received three names, Asia, Europe, and Libya—the names of women;... nor can I learn who it was that established these artificial distinctions, or whence were derived these appellations.”

We scarcely need to point out the appropriateness of a name which exactly fits the Saxon, Teutonic, and Latin conditions here. It is also clear that we need not ask whether Amerigo Vespucci was worthy to have his name given to a hemisphere. His name, it has been shown plainly, was but the cup that held the essence.