Tomorrow is the five hundredth anniversary of the first naming of “America” which took place in the French town of St. Die. The cartographer Martin Waldseemueller used the term on a map he prepared for Rene II, the Duke of Lorraine.

“AMERICA,” in capital letters, appears on a part of the map showing what is now Brazil. The first map to depict a separate Western Hemisphere and a separate Pacific Ocean, it also included an inset of both North and South America, and a portrait of “Amerigi Vespucci,” whom Waldseemueller honored for being the first to identify the New World as a new land mass.

The cartographer explained his use of the term:

“Europe and Asia have received names of women,” Waldseemueller wrote in the book first released to the public on April 24, 1507. “I see no reason why we should not call this other part ‘Amerige,’ that is to say the land of Americus, or America, after the sagacious discoverer.”

The map itself was quite impressive as was its complete title:

The full title for the 12-panel map covering 36 square feet was “a drawing of the whole earth following the tradition of Ptolemy and the travels of Amerigo Vespucci and others.”

Today the map is located in the Library of Congress, which acquired it in 2003 for

$10 million … making the map the most expensive single item it had ever acquired. “It is remarkable that the entire Western Hemisphere was named for a living person; Vespucci did not die until 1512,” wrote John R. Hebert, the library’s chief of the geography and map division.

The full article: “‘America’s Birth Certificate’ Turns 500″