from sea to shining sea

Last week, I made a terrible mistake, and I knew it when I made it.

Our local Facebook page on covid19 was discussing some recent restrictions that the governor of Jalisco had threatened to impose (but has not done so yet). I posted a comment that I was not surprised because of the number of confirmed cases in Jalisco. And then I stepped in it. I wrote, at the current trend, Mexico will have one of the highest infection rates in the Americas.

The response was almost immediate that I was wrong. Certainly Mexico's infection rate would never be as high as America's.

And in that little apostrophe, there is a story. Or, at least, an essay.

We once thought we knew where the word "America" came from. The accepted history is that two German cartographers (Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann -- two names that just roll off of the tongue) named the New World "America" in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, the first explorer to realize the land mass Christopher Columbus believed was the Far East was actually a new discovery. There were plenty of Indians in the New World who already knew they did not live in the East Indies.

There have been some recent suggestions from the incense and crystal crowd that the word "America" is a Mayan word meaning Land of the Wind. But, we will stick to the Waldseemüller/Ringmann story because it really does not matter to the rest of our discussion.

So, America it was. A huge continent stretching from Kaffeklubben Island in the north to Tierra del Fuego in the south.*

When I was in school, I learned there were seven continents -- Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. Most of my European friends were taught there were only five continents. The difference is that the two Americas were designated America, and Europe and Asia were combined into Eurasia. (I never understood in school how the Urals created a divide between Europe and Asia as continents.)

But that is not where the problem arises in general conversation. We inhabitants of the New World are accustomed to speaking of North America (from Canada to Panama, with the Caribbean basin thrown in) as a continent, though I have encountered people who believe that North America is solely Canada and the United States of America. Everything south of Panama is South America. But, combined they are "The Americas."

The problem arises when national labels are tossed into the mix. When the Spanish colonies rebelled against the king in Madrid, many of them called themselves "Americans" to distinguish themselves from their Spanish overlords. That was true in Mexico, as well. Ignacio Allende referred to himself as "a proud American."

To our ears that sounds a bit odd. Usually when that term is used these days, it refers to the most populous country in North America -- the United States of America. Almost everyone in the world shortens the name of the country to "America" and calls the national inhabitants "Americans."

There are other conventions. The Royal Academy disdains the use of the word "americano" in Spanish, preferring the tongue-twisting "estadounidense." But almost every Mexican I know calls me an "americano." Actually, most forget where I am from and fall back on the local default of "canadiense" -- or the far less accurate "norteamericano."

But "American" is the default term used throughout the world. You can hear it shouted by communist and fascist students during protests of one kind or another. And the news media consistently refer to "America" and "Americans," and we all know exactly what is being discussed.

The confusion arises from the fact that the country's name also incorporates the name of the continent where it resides. But, the name makes sense. For some time, I used the truncated form of "The United States" when I was referring to the country.

The problem with that is that there are other federal systems whose formal name includes "United States." I live in one -- Estados Unidos Mexicanos, which can be translated to "United States of Mexico."

And "The States," which I do use now and then, sounds like the generic equivalent of chemical properties.

So, I am an American and I come from America. In truth, I usually just describe myself as an Oregonian.

America is a country (or it can be the combined continents of North and South America). The Americas refers to all the constituent nation-states in North and South America, or it could refer to the two continents. The genitive form (America's) almost always refers to something linked to the United States of America. The genitive form of the continents would be Americas'.

When the American colonists were in the process of ridding themselves of the German king in the mid-1770s, they needed a name to describe the territory of the thirteen colonies. Until then, each colony was known simply by its colonial name. Citizens would describe themselves as Massachusetts men or Virginians.

It appears, almost by accident, the term "United States of America" came into use. Perhaps mirroring "the King's colonies in America." But, on 9 September 1776, the Continental Congress (another hubristic title) officially declared the country's name to be "The United States of America," a mere year or two after the term had first been used.

And all of that now leaves us with the need to read and listen carefully. The two phrases ("America's infection rate" and "the infection rate in the Americas") mean quite different things.

As Sean Connery would (and did) say: "Here endeth the lesson."

  


* -- There is something missing from North America in the map at the top of this essay. A great prize awaits anyone who sees it.