" His second letter,
written from Portugal in September, 1504, to another friend, was used by
Martin Waldseemuller, a German professor who was then collecting all the
information he could gather to make up a book on geography.
Martin Waldseemuller divided the globe into four large parts or
continents--Europe, Asia, Africa, and the newly discovered fourth part,
which he suggested "ought to be called America, because Americus
discovered it." This professor, like most learned men of his time, wrote
in Latin; and in Latin the Italian name Americo is Americus; the
feminine form of Americus is America, which was used because it was
customary to christen countries with feminine names. As nobody else had
yet suggested a name for the vast new lands in the west, the German's
christening of 1507 was adopted for the country which should have been
called Columbia, in justice to the man who first had the splendid
courage to sail to it across the untraveled waters and reveal its
existence to Europe. Had Columbus lived to know that this was going to
happen, it would have been one more grievance and one more act of
ingratitude added to his already long list; but at the time that Americo
Vespucci visited his countryman who lay ill in Sevilla, neither one of
them was thinking about a name for the far-away lands.
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