The Name of the “New World”
By Clay Hipp
A borrowed name and a question
The Santa Maria at Sea, 1939 —Michael Zeno Diemer, German Painter
There was once this Italian dude with the improbable name of Amerigo Vespucci.
Amerigo Vespucci, 1816 -Charles Willson Peale, oil on canvas
He had the great privilege, hundreds of years ago, of taking two sailing voyages exploring the New World in the company of others. He seems to have been a gifted writer whose accounts of these journeys became extremely popular. Without the gift of TV or the Web, they became so well known that cartographers began to place a translation of his name on the vast (and largely unknown and unexplored) territories of the mysterious “West”.
And it came to pass that, without lifting anything but his pen, his name became the symbol of territories, whole continents that extended from Tierra del Fuego to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay. He did not have to be born rich, make and lose fortunes, become a TV celebrity to parlay his fame into becoming a famous politician who was elected the leader of the “Free Western World”. And now this new guy wants his name (of questionable heritage) to become synonymous with all the territories of that same new world even without ever even visiting them. But as we speak, his name is being put on lakes, seas, former states and whole neighboring countries!
No, Vespucci just got lucky at just the right time. Go figure. If he came back, would good old Amerigo be angry, ashamed, or simply amazed? Personally, I am guessing he would be embarrassed, mortified. I have to wonder if he might petition the rest of the world to get his name off these things and return them to the rightful owners and heirs. Then he could write his memoir and perhaps become even richer than the current “poseur”. Maybe he could buy him out and truly “save the world”. Or even better yet, sue him for “stealing” his idea and image, and damaging his reputation.
Heck, someone might even write a new “gospel” of Vespucci (especially since it took him only five hundred years or so to come back!).
Is life not stranger than fiction?
Seriously though, isn’t it time either to remove the names of those continents and countries (which seem to imply kinship and community and commonality) or to find some momentous way to actually bring them all together?
Perhaps it could happen by having a huge gathering (somewhere in “Central” America?), and inviting representatives from the remaining indigenous peoples to caucus and prepare their very own proposal?
I am betting that among the Incas, and Mayans, and Aztecs and the millions of smaller groups from South, Central, and Northern places, there is some great unifying and abiding theme or mysterious essence that has been in their cultures since human history began, that would be close to perfect. As I have come to understand it, they all have called themselves something that expresses or implies, “The People”, reminiscent of our proud revolutionary document, and the Constitution, said at our beginning: “We the People”.
What we did to our very first people (on all continents) need not be recounted here.
An exercise —if you “ruled the world”, metaphorically speaking, what name might you choose for the new “America”?