Quarter Midgets of America

Christian County Quarter Midget Association

Who first coined the term United States of America?: Sp16PSC101_3004_WB, Intro American Politics(Davis)

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Several names of the United States of America are in common use. Formal alternatives to the full name include the “United States”, “America”, as well as the initialisms “U.S.” and the “U.S.A.”; colloquial names include “the States” and the “U.S. of A.”

It is generally accepted that the name “America” derives from the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The term dates back to 1507, when it appeared on a world map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, in honor of Vespucci. The full name “United States of America” was first used during the American Revolutionary War, though its precise origin is a matter of contention.[1] The newly formed union was first known as the “United Colonies”, and the earliest known usage of the modern full name dates from a January 2, 1776 letter written between two military officers. The Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson, and the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, both contain the name “United States of America.” The name was officially adopted by the second Continental Congress on September 9, 1776.

Etymology[edit]

America[edit]

The earliest known use of the name “America” dates to 1505, when German poet Matthias Ringmann used it in a poem about the New World.[2] The word is a Latinized form of the first name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass, rather than the eastern limit of Asia.[3][4][5] On April 25, 1507, the map Universalis Cosmographia, created by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, was published alongside this poem.[2][5] The map uses the label “America” for what is now known as South America. In 1538, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator used the name “America” on his own world map, applying it to the entire Western Hemisphere.[6]

Alternative theories suggest that “America” derives from the Amerrisque Mountains of Nicaragua,[7] or from the surname of wealthy Anglo-Welsh merchant Richard Amerike.[8]

United States of America[edit]

The first documentary evidence of the phrase “United States of America” dates from a January 2, 1776, letter written by Stephen Moylan, Esquire, to George Washington‘s aide-de-camp Joseph Reed. Moylan was fulfilling Reed’s role during the latter’s absence.[1] Moylan expressed his wish to go “with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain” to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort.[1][9][10] The first known publication of the phrase “United States of America” was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776.[11] It is commonly mistaken that Thomas Paine coined the term in his pamphlet Common Sense, published in January 1776, but he never used the final form.[1][a]

The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed no later than June 17, 1776, declared “The name of this Confederation shall be the ‘United States of America’.”[12] The final version of the Articles, sent to the states for ratification in late 1777, stated that “The Stile of this Confederacy shall be ‘The United States of America’.”[13] In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” in all capitalized letters in the headline of his “original Rough draught”[b] of the Declaration of Independence. This draft of the document did not surface until June 21, 1776, and it is unclear whether it was written before or after Dickinson used the term in his June 17 draft of the Articles of Confederation.[12] In any case, the Declaration of Independence was the first official document to use the nation’s new title.[1]

History[edit]

In the early days of the American Revolution, the colonies as a unit were most commonly referred to as the “United Colonies“. For example, president of the Continental Congress Richard Henry Lee wrote in a June 7, 1776 resolution: “These United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, free and independent States.”[14] Before 1776, names for the colonies varied significantly; they included “Twelve United English Colonies of North America”, “United Colonies of North America”, and others.[15] On September 9, 1776, the Second Continental Congress officially changed the nation’s name to the “United States of America”.[14][16]

In the first few years of the United States, however, there remained some discrepancies of usage. In the Treaty of Alliance (1778) with France, the term “United States of North America” was used. In accordance with this usage, when the Congress was drawing bills of exchange for French commissioners on May 19, 1778, they decided to use this term.[17] President of the Continental Congress Henry Laurens even wrote that “Congress have adopted the Stile of the Treaties of Paris, ‘the United States of North America’.” Congress, however, reconsidered this change on July 11, 1778 and resolved to drop “North” from the bills of exchange, making them consistent with the name adopted in 1776.[15][18]

Since the Articles of Confederation, the concept of a Perpetual Union between the states has existed, and “Union” has become synonymous with “United States”.[19] This usage was especially prevalent during the Civil War, when it referred specifically to the loyalist northern states which remained part of the federal union.[20]

The term “America” was seldom used in the United States before the 1890s, and rarely used by presidents before Theodore Roosevelt. It does not appear in patriotic songs composed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including “The Star-Spangled Banner“, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee“, and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic“, although it is common in 20th-century songs like “God Bless America“.[21] The name “Columbia“, popular in American poetry and songs of the late 18th century, derives its origin from Christopher Columbus. Many landmarks and institutions in the Western Hemisphere bear his name, including the country of Colombia and the District of Columbia.[22]

Circa 1810, the term Uncle Sam was “a cant term in the army for the United States,” according to a 1810 edition Niles’ Weekly Register.[23] Uncle Sam is now known as a national personification of the United States.

Usage as a singular noun[edit]

The headline of Foster’s column

The phrase “United States” was originally plural, a description of a collection of independent states—e.g., “the United States are”—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865.[24][25] The singular form became popular after the end of the Civil War, and is now standard.[26] However, the plural form is retained in the idiom “these United States”.[27] The difference is more significant than usage; it is a difference between a collection of states and a unit.[26]

The transition from plural to singular was gradual.[25] In a May 4, 1901, column in the New York Times titled “ARE OR IS? Whether a Plural or Singular Verb Goes With the Words United States”, former Secretary of State John W. Foster noted that early statesmen such as Alexander Hamilton and Daniel Webster had used the singular form, as well as the Treaty of Paris (1898) and Hay–Pauncefote Treaty of 1900; conversely, most Supreme Court decisions still used the plural form. He concludes that “since the civil war the tendency has been towards [singular] use.”[28]Mark Liberman of the University of Pennsylvania found that, in the corpus of Supreme Court opinions, the transition to singular usage occurred in the early 1900s.[29] Among English-language books, the transition happened earlier, around 1880.[30]

Usage[edit]

The name “United States” is unambiguous; “United States of America” may be used in titles or when extra formality is desired. However, “United States” and “U.S.” may be used adjectivally, while the full name cannot.[31] English usage of “America” rarely refers to topics unrelated to the United States, despite the usage of “Americas” as the totality of North and South America.[32] Colloquial names include the “U.S. of A.” and, internationally, “the States”. Even more informal names include “Murica” and “Merica”, which imply a jocular and sometimes derogatory tone; these names come from stereotypical white southerners’ pronunciation of the word.[33]

The official U.S. Government Publishing Office Style Manual prescribes specific usages for “U.S.” and “United States”. In treaties, congressional bills, etc.,[c] “United States” is always used. In a sentence containing the name of another country, “United States” must be used. Otherwise, “U.S.” is used preceding a government organization or as an adjective, but “United States” is used as an adjective preceding non-governmental organizations (e.g. United States Steel Corporation).[34]

Style guides conflict over how various names for the United States should be used. The Chicago Manual of Style, until the 17th edition, required “US” and “U.S.” to be used as an adjective; it now permits the usage of both as a noun,[35][36] though “United States” is still preferred in this case.[37] The Associated Press Stylebook permits the usage of “US” and “U.S.” as both adjectives and nouns, though “US” (without the periods) is only allowed in headlines. APA Style, in contrast, only allows “U.S.” to be used as an adjective, and disallows “US”.[38]

Other languages[edit]

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In Spanish, the U.S. is known as Estados Unidos, literally “United States.” The Americas are known simply as América.[39] Spanish uses estadounidense and americano for the adjectival form, with the latter being mostly proscribed.[40][41] In Chinese, the U.S. is known as 美国 (pinyin: měiguó). Literally “beautiful country,” it in fact comes from the second character of the transliteration of America as “亚美利加” (pinyin: yàměilìjiā). The Americas are known as 美洲 (pinyin: měizhōu), with the same etymology.[42] In Japanese, the U.S. is known as アメリカ (Hepburn: amerika) and 米国 (Hepburn: beikoku), borrowing from Chinese. In Hindi, the U.S. is transliterated to अमेरिका (amerika).[43] In Esperanto, the United States of America is known as “Usono”, borrowing from English Usonia. In Burmese, the United States of America is known as အမေရိကန်ပြည်ထောင်စု (amerikan pyedaungsu), literally “American Union.”[44] In Kannada, the United States is known as “ಅಮೇರಿಕ ಸಂಯುಕ್ತ ಸಂಸ್ಥಾನ”, literally “America’s Union of States.”[45]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Paine used the terms “United Colonies”, “American states”, and “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA”, but never “United States of America”.[1]
  2. ^ “Draught” is the British spelling of “draft”.
  3. ^ The full list is: “formal writing (treaties,
    Executive orders, proclamations, etc.); congressional bills; legal citations and courtwork; and covers and title pages.”[34]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f DeLear, Byron (July 4, 2013) Who coined ‘United States of America’? Mystery might have intriguing answer.
  2. ^ a b Laubenberger, Franz; Rowan, Steven (1982). “The Naming of America”. Sixteenth Century Journal. 13 (4): 92. doi:10.2307/2540012. JSTOR 2540012.
  3. ^ Sider, Sandra (2007). Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe. Oxford University Press. p. 226. ISBN 978-0-19-533084-7.
  4. ^ Szalay, Jessie (September 20, 2017). “Amerigo Vespucci: Facts, Biography & Naming of America”. Live Science. Retrieved June 23, 2019.
  5. ^ a b Allen, Erin (4 July 2016). “How Did America Get Its Name?”. Library of Congress Blog. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  6. ^ Jonathan Cohen. “The Naming of America: Fragments We’ve Shored Against Ourselves”. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
  7. ^ Rea, Joy (February 1964). “On the Naming of America”. American Speech. 39 (1): 42–50. doi:10.2307/453925. JSTOR 453925.
  8. ^ Macdonald, Peter (17 February 2011). “BBC History in Depth; The Naming of America; Richard Amerike”. BBC. Retrieved 24 February 2011.
  9. ^ Touba, Mariam (November 5, 2014) Who Coined the Phrase ‘United States of America’? You May Never Guess “Here, on January 2, 1776… Stephen Moylan, an acting secretary to General George Washington, spells it out, ‘I should like vastly to go with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain’ to seek foreign assistance for the cause.” New-York Historical Society Museum & Library
  10. ^ Fay, John (July 15, 2016) The forgotten Irishman who named the ‘United States of America’ “According to the NY Historical Society, Stephen Moylan was the man responsible for the earliest documented use of the phrase ‘United States of America’.” IrishCentral.com
  11. ^ ““To the inhabitants of Virginia”, by A PLANTER. Dixon and Hunter’s. April 6, 1776, Williamsburg, Virginia. Letter is also included in Peter Force’s American Archives“. The Virginia Gazette. Vol. 5, no. 1287. Archived from the original on December 19, 2014.
  12. ^ a b Safire, William (2003). No Uncertain Terms: More Writing from the Popular “On Language” Column in The New York Times Magazine. Simon and Schuster. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-7432-4955-3.
  13. ^ Mostert, Mary (2005). The Threat of Anarchy Leads to the Constitution of the United States. CTR Publishing, Inc. ISBN 978-0-9753851-4-2.
  14. ^ a b Glass, Andrew (September 9, 2014). “Continental Congress names the United States, Sept. 9, 1776”. Politico. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  15. ^ a b Burnett, Edmund C. (1925). “The Name “United States of America”“. The American Historical Review. 31 (1): 79–81. doi:10.2307/1904503. ISSN 0002-8762. JSTOR 1904503. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
  16. ^ Adams, John (September 9, 1776). Autobiography of John Adams.
  17. ^ “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875”. memory.loc.gov.
  18. ^ “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875”. memory.loc.gov. Resolved, That the resolutions of Congress of the 19 May last, relative to bills of exchange… that the word ‘North,’ preceding the word ‘America,’ be omitted in the form of the bills…
  19. ^ “Articles of Confederation (1777)”. National Archives. 2021-04-09. Retrieved 2022-06-04.
  20. ^ Detweiler, Robert; Stampp, Kenneth M. (February 1981). “The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War”. The History Teacher. 14 (2): 276. doi:10.2307/493285. ISSN 0018-2745.
  21. ^ Historian Daniel Immerwahr, speaking on Becoming America – NPR Throughline Podcast
  22. ^ Brokenshire, Brad (1993). Washington State Place Names. Caxton Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-87004-562-2.
  23. ^ Niles’ Weekly Register. Vol. 7. Franklin Press, Baltimore. 1815. p. 187.
  24. ^ Greg, Percy (1892). History of the United States from the Foundation of Virginia to the Reconstruction of the Union. West, Johnston & Company. p. 276.
  25. ^ a b c Zimmer, Benjamin. “Language Log: Life in these, uh, this United States”. itre.cis.upenn.edu. Retrieved 3 September 2020. Indeed, not only does the Constitution consistently use the plural construct, but so do official texts in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War — as with the pronominal anaphora used in the 13th Amendment
  26. ^ a b G. H. Emerson, The Universalist Quarterly and General Review, Vol. 28 (January 1891), p. 49, quoted in[25]
  27. ^ Burt, Andrew (13 May 2013). “‘These United States’: How Obama’s Vocal Tic Reveals a Polarized America”. The Atlantic. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
  28. ^ Foster, John Watson (May 4, 1901). “ARE OR IS? Whether a Plural or a Singular Verb Goes With the Words United States”. p. 23. Retrieved 3 September 2020. Among statesmen who have used the singular form may be cited Hamiltion, Webster…. The decisions of the Supreme Court… rarely show the use of the singular…. in the peace treaty with Spain of 1898, the term… is uniformly treated in the singular…. The Hay-Paunce-fote canal treaty of 1900… also treats ‘United States’ as a singular noun.
  29. ^ Liberman, Mark. “When did the Supreme Court make us an ‘is’?”. Language Log. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
  30. ^ Aiden, Erez; Michel, Jean-Baptiste (2014). Uncharted: big data as a lens on human culture. New York: Penguin. p. 4. ISBN 978-1594487453. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
  31. ^ “Is USA A Noun Or Adjective?”. Dictionary.com. 9 March 2017.
  32. ^ Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993). The Columbia guide to standard American English. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-06989-2.
  33. ^ “Murica”. Dictionary.com Unabridged (Online). n.d.
  34. ^ a b U.S. Government Publishing Office Style Manual. January 12, 2017. pp. 222–223. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  35. ^ “You Could Look it Up”. The Chicago Manual of Style Online. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  36. ^ “10.4”. The Chicago Manual of Style (Seventeenth ed.). Chicago. 2017. ISBN 978-0-226-28705-8. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  37. ^ The Chicago Manual of Style (Seventeenth ed.). Chicago. 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
  38. ^ “APA Abbreviations // Purdue Writing Lab”. Purdue Writing Lab. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
  39. ^ “Spanish Translation of ‘America’“. Collins English-Spanish Dictionary. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
  40. ^ “English Translation of “estadounidense” | Collins Spanish-English Dictionary”. www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved 2020-09-20.
  41. ^ ASALE, RAE-; RAE. “americano, americana | Diccionario de la lengua española”. «Diccionario de la lengua española» – Edición del Tricentenario (in Spanish). Retrieved 2021-09-15.
  42. ^ 汉英词典 (A Chinese–English Dictionary). Beijing: 商务印书馆 (Commercial Press). 1981. p. 463.
  43. ^ Caturvedi, Mahendra (1970). A practical Hindi-English dictionary. Delhi: National Publishing House. p. 40. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
  44. ^ “BurmeseTranslation of ‘America’“. MYORDBOK English-Burmese Dictionary. Retrieved 7 November 2020.
  45. ^ “ಅಮೇರಿಕ ಸಂಯುಕ್ತ ಸಂಸ್ಥಾನ”, ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ (in Kannada), 2020-01-22, retrieved 2021-05-07

FAQs

Who first called America America?

cartographer Martin Waldseemüller

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Why are we named the United States of America?

While the colonies may have established it, ?America? was given a name long before. America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer who set forth the then revolutionary concept that the lands that Christopher Columbus sailed to in 1492 were part of a separate continent

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What was US called before 1776?

United Colonies

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What did the Native Americans call America?

Turtle Island is a name for Earth or North America, used by some Indigenous peoples, as well as by some Indigenous rights activists. The name is based on a common North American Indigenous creation story and is in some cultures synonymous with “North America.”

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What was America before 1492?

Before 1492, modern-day Mexico, most of Central America, and the southwestern United States comprised an area now known as Meso or Middle America.

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Why is it called the United States of America and not the India?

the United States of America refers to the country’s name, and it is named as such because the country is a group of states. If ‘ “the United States of America”, refers to the group of states, not the country’s name.

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How did Indians get to America?

Scientists have found that Native American populations – from Canada to the southern tip of Chile – arose from at least three migrations, with the majority descended entirely from a single group of First American migrants that crossed over through Beringia, a land bridge between Asia and America that existed during the …

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How was America founded?

The United States of America was created on July 4, 1776, with the Declaration of Independence of thirteen British colonies in North America. In the Lee Resolution of July 2, 1776, the colonies resolved that they were free and independent states.

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Why we use the before United States of America?

Originally Answered: why is the word “the” used before United states and not India? The use of the definite article has nothing to do with notions of importance of a country. It is applied to the adjective that precedes the country name. It is used when referring to ?The United States? but not when saying ?America?.

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Who lived in the US first?

Up until the 1970s, these first Americans had a name: the Clovis peoples. They get their name from an ancient settlement discovered near Clovis, New Mexico, dated to over 11,000 years ago. And DNA suggests they are the direct ancestors of nearly 80 percent of all indigenous people in the Americas.

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What are the only 2 countries to have the officially in the name?

Answer and Explanation: The two countries with the word ”the” officially in their names are The Gambia and The Bahamas.

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Did Ukraine used to be called the Ukraine?

From 1922 until 1991, Ukraine was the informal name of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union (annexed by Germany as Reichskommissariat Ukraine during 1941?1944).

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What is the newest named country?

The newest internationally recognized country in the world is the African country of South Sudan, which declared independence on July 9, 2011.

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How Did America Get Its Name? – Library of Congress Blogs

How Did America Get Its Name? Today, America celebrates its independence. Our founding fathers drafted and adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring America’s freedom from Great Britain and setting in motion universal human rights. While the colonies may have established it, “America” was given a name long before. America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer who set forth the then revolutionary concept that the lands that Christopher Columbus sailed to in 1492 were part of a separate continent. A map created in 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller was the first to depict this new continent with the name “America,” a Latinized version of “Amerigo.” “America” is identified in the top portion of this segment of the 1507 Waldseemüller map. Geography and Map Division. A crown jewel in the Library’s cartographic collections is the map, also known as “America’s Birth Certificate.” While the map has been much publicized since it was acquired in 2003, it’s worthy of exploration today of all days. The map grew out of an ambitious project in St. Dié, France, in the early years of the 16th century, to update geographic knowledge flowing from the new discoveries of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Waldseemüller’s large world map was the most exciting product of that research effort. He included on the map data gathered by Vespucci during his voyages of 1501-1502 to the New World. Waldseemüller named the new lands “America” on his 1507 map in the recognition of Vespucci’s understanding that a new continent had been uncovered following Columbus’ and subsequent voyages in the late 15th century. An edition of 1,000 copies of the large wood-cut print was reportedly printed and sold, but no other copy is known to have survived. It was the first map, printed or manuscript, to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as a separate ocean. The map reflected a huge leap forward in knowledge, recognizing the newly found American landmass and forever changing mankind’s understanding and perception of the world itself. For more than 350 years the map was housed in a 16th-century castle in Wolfegg, in southern Germany. The introduction to Waldseemüller’s “Cosmographie” actually contains the first suggestion that the area of Columbus’ discovery be named “America” in honor of Vespucci, who recognized that a “New World,” the so-called fourth part of the world, had been reached through Columbus’ voyage. Before that time, there was no name that collectively identified the Western Hemisphere. The earlier Spanish explorers referred to the area as the Indies believing, as did Columbus, that it was a part of eastern Asia. The Library has plenty of other resources on Waldseemüller and the map, including videos and a pretty cool story regarding the institution’s partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in building a hermetically sealed case for the priceless map. You can also read about the project on the NIST site.

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Who coined the name 'United States of America'? Mystery gets …

Who coined the name ‘United States of America’? Mystery gets new twist. It may seem surprising, but nobody is really sure who came up with the phrase, “United States of America.”Speculation generally swirls around a familiar cast of characters – the two Toms (Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson), Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, and even a gentleman named Oliver Ellsworth (a delegate from the Constitutional Convention of 1787). But every instance of those gentlemen using the name “United States of America” is predated by a recently discovered example of the phrase in the Revolutionary-era Virginia Gazette.So who was perhaps the first person ever to write the words “United States of America”? A PLANTER. That was how the author of an essay in the Gazette signed the anonymous letter. During that time, it was common practice for essays and polemics to be published anonymously in an attempt to avoid future charges of treason – only later has history identified some of these authors. The discovery adds a new twist – as well as the mystery of the Planter’s identity – to the search for the origin of a national name that has now become iconic. Several references mistakenly credit Paine with formulating the name in January 1776. Paine’s popular and persuasive book, “Common Sense,” uses “United Colonies,” “American states,” and “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA,” but he never uses the final form. The National Archives, meanwhile, cite the first known use of the “formal term United States of America” as being the Declaration of Independence, which would recognize Jefferson as the originator. Written in June 1776, Jefferson’s “original Rough draught” placed the new name at the head of the business – “A Declaration by the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in General Congress assembled.”Jefferson clearly had an idea as to what would sound good by presenting the national moniker in capitalized letters. But in the final edit, the line was changed to read, “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” The fact that “United States of America” appears in both versions of the Declaration may have been enough evidence to credit Jefferson with coining the phrase, but there is another example published three months earlier.Beginning in March 1776, a series of anonymously written articles began appearing in The Virginia Gazette – one of three different Virginia Gazettes being published in Williamsburg at that time. Addressed to the “Inhabitants of Virginia,” the essays present an economic set of arguments promoting independence versus reconciliation with Great Britain. The author estimates total Colonial losses at $24 million and laments the possibility of truce without full reparation – and then voices for the first time what would become the name of our nation.“What a prodigious sum for the united states of America to give up for the sake of a peace, that, very probably, itself would be one of the greatest misfortunes!” – A PLANTERSo who is A PLANTER?Likely candidates could be well-known Virginians, like Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, or even Jefferson. Some of the essay’s phrasing can…

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Congress renames the nation “United States of America”

Congress renames the nation “United States of America”On September 9, 1776, the Continental Congress formally declares the name of the new nation to be the “United States” of America. This replaced the term “United Colonies,” which had been in general use.In the Congressional declaration dated September 9, 1776, the delegates wrote, “That in all continental commissions, and other instruments, where, heretofore, the words ‘United Colonies’ have been used, the stile be altered for the future to the “United States.”A resolution by Richard Henry Lee, which had been presented to Congress on June 7 and approved on July 2, 1776, issued the resolve, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States….” As a result, John Adams thought July 2 would be celebrated as “the most memorable epoch in the history of America.” Instead, the day has been largely forgotten in favor of July 4, when Jefferson’s edited Declaration of Independence was adopted. That document also states, “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.” However, Lee began with the line, while Jefferson saved it for the middle of his closing paragraph.By September, the Declaration of Independence had been drafted, signed, printed and sent to Great Britain. What Congress had declared to be true on paper in July was clearly the case in practice, as Patriot blood was spilled against the British on the battlefields of Boston, Montreal, Quebec and New York. Congress had created a country from a cluster of colonies and the nation’s new name reflected that reality.On September 9, 2007, the NFL catches the New England Patriots illegally videotaping coaching signals of the New York Jets from an unauthorized location in a Week 1 game in East Rutherford, N.J.—a scandal the media soon dubs “Spygate.”  READ MORE: 8 Scandals That Rocked the NFL …read moreThe King of Rock and Roll teams up with TV’s reigning variety program, as Elvis Presley appears on “The Ed Sullivan Show” for the first time on September 9, 1956. After earning big ratings for “The Steve Allen Show,” the Dorsey Brothers “Stage Show” and “The Milton Berle Show,” …read morePrisoners seize control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York beginning on September 9, 1971. Later that day, state police retook most of the prison, but 1,281 convicts occupied an exercise field called D Yard, where they held 39 prison …read moreFrances Folsom Cleveland, the wife of President Grover Cleveland, gives birth to a daughter, Esther, in the White House. On June 2, 1886, in an intimate ceremony held in the Blue Room of the White House, President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom, the daughter of …read moreOn September 9, 1942, a Japanese floatplane drops incendiary bombs on an Oregon state forest—the first air attack on the U.S. mainland in the war. Launching from the Japanese sub I-25, Nobuo Fujita piloted his light aircraft over the state of Oregon and firebombed Mount Emily, …read moreFuneral services, attended by 250,000 mourners, are held for Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square. Among those in attendance were Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, Chinese Vice-Premier Li Hsien-nien and Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. Ho had established the Indochinese …read moreSergeant Duane D. Hackney is presented with the Air Force Cross for bravery in rescuing an Air Force pilot in Vietnam. He was the first living Air Force enlisted man to receive the award, the nation’s second highest award for bravery in action. …read moreThough it had only been a part of the United States for less than two years, California becomes the 31st state in the union (without ever even having been a territory) on September 9, 1850. READ MORE: When California (Briefly) Became Its Own Nation Mexico had reluctantly ceded …read moreOn September 9, 1910, Alice B. Toklas becomes the lifetime house mate of avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein. Stein, who shared a house with her brother Leo for many years, met Toklas in 1907. Toklas began staying with Stein and Leo in Paris in 1909, then moved in permanently in …read moreAudiences at the Fox Theater in Riverside,…

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Names of the United States – Wikipedia

Names of the United States Several names of the United States of America are in common use. Formal alternatives to the full name include the “United States”, “America”, as well as the initialisms “U.S.” and the “U.S.A.”; colloquial names include “the States” and the “U.S. of A.” It is generally accepted that the name “America” derives from the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The term dates back to 1507, when it appeared on a world map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, in honor of Vespucci. The full name “United States of America” was first used during the American Revolutionary War, though its precise origin is a matter of contention.[1] The newly formed union was first known as the “United Colonies”, and the earliest known usage of the modern full name dates from a January 2, 1776 letter written between two military officers. The Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson, and the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, both contain the name “United States of America.” The name was officially adopted by the second Continental Congress on September 9, 1776. Etymology[edit] America[edit] The earliest known use of the name “America” dates to 1505, when German poet Matthias Ringmann used it in a poem about the New World.[2] The word is a Latinized form of the first name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass, rather than the eastern limit of Asia.[3][4][5] On April 25, 1507, the map Universalis Cosmographia, created by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, was published alongside this poem.[2][5] The map uses the label “America” for what is now known as South America. In 1538, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator used the name “America” on his own world map, applying it to the entire Western Hemisphere.[6] Alternative theories suggest that “America” derives from the Amerrisque Mountains of Nicaragua,[7] or from the surname of wealthy Anglo-Welsh merchant Richard Amerike.[8] United States of America[edit] The first documentary evidence of the phrase “United States of America” dates from a January 2, 1776, letter written by Stephen Moylan, Esquire, to George Washington’s aide-de-camp Joseph Reed. Moylan was fulfilling Reed’s role during the latter’s absence.[1] Moylan expressed his wish to go “with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain” to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort.[1][9][10] The first known publication of the phrase “United States of America” was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776.[11] It is commonly mistaken that Thomas Paine coined the term in his pamphlet Common Sense, published in January 1776, but he never used the final form.[1][a] The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed no later than June 17, 1776, declared “The name of this Confederation shall be the ‘United States of America’.”[12] The final version of the Articles, sent to the states for ratification in late 1777, stated that “The Stile of this Confederacy shall be ‘The United States of America’.”[13] In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” in all capitalized letters in the headline of his “original Rough draught”[b] of the Declaration of Independence. This draft of the document did not surface until June 21, 1776, and it is unclear whether it was written before or after Dickinson used the term in his June 17 draft of the Articles of Confederation.[12] In any case, the Declaration of Independence was the first official document to use the nation’s new title.[1] History[edit] In the early days of the American Revolution, the colonies as a unit were most commonly referred to as the “United Colonies”. For example, president of the Continental Congress Richard Henry Lee wrote in a June 7, 1776 resolution: “These United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, free and independent States.”[14] Before 1776, names for the colonies varied significantly; they included “Twelve United English Colonies of North America”, “United Colonies of North America”,…

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>3:27The United States of America. The USA. America. The Land of the Free. These are just some of the names for that continental sized nation …YouTube · History Matters · Jan 17, 20205 key moments in this video

Who first coined the term United States of America?

Who first coined the term United States of America?: Sp16PSC101_3004_WB, Intro American Politics(Davis) 2162PSC_101_3004 Who first coined the term United States of America?

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Why were we named America? – Sandboxx

Why were we named America? Every country has a name. Usually one it calls itself, and one other countries call it — respectfully, of course. We are the United States of America, and everyone knows it. But why? Where did that name come from? Why are we the United States of America? On September 9, 1776, The Second Continental Congress officially gave its union of colonies the name United States of America. This was not, however, the first time the collection of colonies and territories had been called that. A letter dated January 2, 1776, from Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Stephen Moylan, Esq., to Lt. Col. Joseph Reed, ordered that the “full and ample powers of the United States of America” were to be carried to Spain to assist in the revolutionary war effort, is the earliest historical mentioning. The first known public use of “United States of America” was on April 6, 1776. It was mentioned in the Williamsburg, VA, newspaper, The Virginia Gazette. And the first official documentation of the name was in the June 17, 1776, second draft of the Articles of Confederation, where it is stated that, “The name of this Confederation shall be the ‘United States of America.’” Also in June of 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote in all caps “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” across the top of his working rough draft of the Declaration of Independence. It is not known who used it first, between Jefferson and Dickinson’s Articles of Confederation draft. In the final, official (July 4th) draft of the Declaration of Independence, the uncapped ‘united’ is used: “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” Further, the full “United States of America” is used in the Preamble of the Constitution. While the Second Continental Congress of the United States of America lasted from May 10, 1775, to March 1, 1781… the ratification (and officialization) of the name we use today came on Novermber 15, 1777, when the Congress approved the Articles of Confederation. The first article of the Articles of Confederation explicitly states: “The stile of this Confederacy shall be ‘The United States of America’”. So now that we got all that official naming stuff out of the way, let’s get to this America-ness… Amerigo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The usage of the name America goes back to 1507 — just 15 years after the journey of Christopher Columbus. The name was used on a map of the world. The German cartographer applied the name to what is now South America, to honor the Italian explorer who mapped its coastline: Amerigo Vespucci. And in 1538, the cartographer Gerardus Mercator (where we get the Mercator map projection) was the first to name the ENTIRE Western Hemisphere “America”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “American” was regularly used by the British for the people of the British Colonies in America, even before the Declaration of Independence. Apparently, the name stuck and spread. So by the time the Americans began their climb to independence, then established their own nation as the United States of America, the name became reasonably exclusive. Although both continents in the Western Hemisphere both hold “America” in their name, no other nation in the Western Hemisphere used the word in their name. So, here we stand: Americans of these United States.

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