Names of the United States

The term dates back to 1507, when it appeared on a world map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, in honor of Vespucci, applied to the land that is now Brazil.

[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 phrase "United States of America."

[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.

[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] 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.

[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.

"[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.

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.

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.

[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.

"[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.

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,[37][38] though "United States" is still preferred in this case.

[44][45] Other Romance languages like French (translated États-Unis d'Amérique),[46] Portuguese (Estados Unidos da América),[47] Italian (Stati Uniti d'America)[48] or Romanian (Statele Unite ale Americii) follow a similar pattern.

These constructions borrow the first letters of the English words United States of North America, while changing the final "a" to an "o" for the noun form in conformance with the rules of Esperanto grammar.

[52] According to a pseudonymous account first published in the Boston Courier and later retold by author and U.S. naval officer George H. Preble: When the thirteen stripes and stars first appeared at Canton, much curiosity was excited among the people.

This name at once established itself in the language, and America is now called the kwa kee kwoh [花旗國; Fākeìgwok], the "flower flag country"—and an American, kwa kee kwoh yin [花旗國人; Fākeìgwokyàhn]—"flower flag countryman"—a more complimentary designation than that of "red headed barbarian"—the name first bestowed upon the Dutch.

[55] The modern standard Chinese name for the United States is Měiguó from Mandarin (美国; 美國, with the first character měi literally meaning 'beautiful').

[56] Hézhòngguó was a coinage, probably by Elijah Coleman Bridgman around 1844, which attempted to convey the idea of "many states" (zhòngguó) which are "united" (hé), but due to rebracketing this term became more commonly understood as a "country" (guó) comprising a "union of many" (hézhòng).

[55] Similarly, Vietnamese also uses the borrowed term from Chinese with Sino-Vietnamese reading for the United States, as Hoa Kỳ from 花旗 ("Flower Flag").

[64] Historically, Japanese had used a different kanji transcription for "America" (亞墨利加, with the second character 墨 meaning 'ink'), following the 17th-century Kunyu Wanguo Quantu map.