THE NAME AMERICA. 665 



editor, and at the reverse of the folio numbered 100, he names Martin 

 liacomylus as the author of the map, and even of all the maps of that 

 new edition. But liacomylus had been dead for some time, and it is 

 almost certain that the name America was not put there by him, but 

 more likely by Laurent Phrisius himself, who was probably the medium 

 between Vespucci, Pierre Martyr d'Anghiera, and the Due of Lorraine. 

 It is plain that the name America can not have been popular in 1515, 

 except that it has passed from mouth to mouth among illiterate people, 

 as the masses were then. Shoeuer was a contemporary-, well acquainted 

 with the discoveries of the New World, and it is impossible to accept the 

 idea that its popularity was an error on his part. 



VESPUTIA AND CABOTIA. 



Let us make a few suggestions in order to show the absolute impos- 

 sibility of referring to the christian name of Vespucci the origin of the 

 name America. If the rule to give the family name of the discoverer 

 to a new country had been followed — although Vespucci was not the 

 discoverer — Jean Basin and the Vosgian Gymnasium would have called 

 the New World Vesputia. Does any one entertain for an instant the 

 idea that the proposition of the Vosgian Gymnasium would have stood 

 any chance of being accepted, or even been the object of any discussion I 

 or controversy'? The proposition to call the northern part of the New 

 World Cabotia, in honor of Cabot, although sustained by the well proved 

 fact that Sebastian Cabot first discovered North America — at least 

 scientifically, for the Norsemen certainly anticipated his discovery by 

 several centuries — was never accepted and not even discussed. 



AMERIGIA AND ALBERICIA. 



If we say that the Vosgian Gymnasium and its leader Jean Basin, in 

 the matter of christening the new continent, were conscious that it was 

 well to diverge from the rule of using family names, and that it was best 

 to use the Christian name — although without a single precedent, even 

 in antiquity — why did they choose a name so different from the christ- 

 ian name of Vespucci, for if they followed the orthography of the dif- 

 ferent names before them, they ought to have called the New World 

 Amerigia (for Amerige), Amerigonia (for Amerigo), or Albericia (for Al- 

 bericus). To write those names and pronounce them aloud suffices to 

 show that they were not likely to be used by a majority of those who 

 were accustomed in one way or another, as traders, seamen, adventur- 

 ers, colonists, statesmen, or religious men, to speak of the new continent. 



POETICAL LICENSE OF JEAN BASIN. 



The assimilation of the Christian name of Vespucci, Amerige or 

 Amerigho, to the gold-mirror Indians Amerriques, or their country 

 Sierra Amerrique, is simply a fiction, in which Jean Basin took the 

 name of an Indian tribe and of a country of the New World and placed 



