I still remember the young woman I met a few years ago at a party. She was small, had black hair and an olive skin tone, characteristic of the Hispanophone Latin American country she belonged to. I can’t recall her name now but what she said then came back to me as Donald John Trump looked all set to rechristen the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’.
“The US has stolen ‘America’ from the rest of us,” she told us. “We all are Americans, the whole continent. Not just one country,” she said.
The etymology of ‘America’ is traced to Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine explorer who was the first to tell Europe that the lands discovered by Christopher Columbus were not part of Asia but something wholly new. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller rechristened the New World after Vespucci’s first name. ‘America’ is the feminine of ‘Americus’, the Latin form of ‘Amerigo’.
The name was applied to the entire landmass stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. However, in 1776, the 13 colonies on the eastern seaboard of the North American continent broke away from Britain. By 1783, they had formed a new nation, the United States of America. In English usage across the Anglophone world, ‘America’ usually has referred to the USA.
I sympathise with the young person who told me ‘We all are Americans’. Imagine other continents having a ‘naming dispute with themselves’, where they are overshadowed by one of their constituent nations, so much so that the name of the continent usually refers to the country, rather than the larger landmass!
An alternate name for the US is ‘Columbia’, the feminine of ‘Columbus’. There is, of course, ‘Colombia’, also sharing the same etymological origin. The ‘Columbia’ form exists to this day in Washington, District of Columbia, Columbia University and the Columbia river.
But while it is an alternative name for the US and the country’s national personification, ‘Columbia’ has never been the primary term for the nation.
Essentially though, it all boils down to language and ethnicity. So, when Donald Trump talks of calling the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ as the ‘Gulf of America’, he is thinking from an Anglo-American standpoint.
The English (later the British) were latecomers to the Americas. Roanoke (1585), Jamestown (1607), Plymouth (1620) and Massachusetts (1628) were founded much later than Columbus landing in the West Indies (1492) or even the oldest city in the continental US, St Augustine in Florida (founded in 1565).
However, as the leader of the most powerful country in the world, Trump has the privilege to think that ‘America’ is only ‘Anglophone America’. Never mind the Hispano-, Luso- or Francophone parts of the landmass. Or even the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
This is vindicated further by his use of the term ‘Manifest Destiny’ for the US sending a person to Mars. Coined by John Louis O’Sullivan, it is one of the earliest expressions of American imperialism.
For Donald Trump seeks to bring back Pax Americana or the American Empire. The Spanish-American War of 1898 signalled the rise of the US on the world stage as a global superpower. Although it won the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the US now faces a rising China and Trump seeks to marshall his core base. Language is a handy tool and hence the use of these terms.
One wonders though as to how the International Hydrographic Organization will react to the rechristening of the Gulf of Mexico.
Also, should the term ‘America’ be done away altogether when referring to the landmass? After all, it is a legacy of colonialism. Indigenous peoples of the region have proposed other terms, but unfortunately, they have not caught on.
So, for now, ‘America’ rules!