The Origins of the Word ‘America’

British comedians Jay Foreman (previously) and Mark Cooper-Jones of Map Men humorously dug into the origins of the word “America”, how the word came about, how early maps portrayed America, how the it became synonymous with the United States, and why many around the world take issue with the use of that word to describe only the US.

So how come America got to name itself America? You’d think that writing the Latin word “America” on Latin America would mean America should describe Latin America….In 1776, the 13 colonies that had been known as British America used their rifles to shotgun the name “The United States of America”. Over time, the long name “The United States of America” got shortened to just “America” which is how the English-speaking world almost exclusively refers to the United States today. And, as you might expect, or if you’re an American, as you might never have given any thought to this annoys a lot of people.