Continents of the world
Continents of the world :
Africa | Antarctica
| America | Asia
| Australia | Eurasia
| Eurafrasia | Europe
| Oceania | North
America | South
America
America
The Americas are the lands of the Western hemisphere or New World consisting of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area) and contain about 14% of the human population. The term the Americas is a relatively recent alternative to the term America, which is ambiguous as it may refer to either this entire landmass or just the United States of America.
The majority of the people live in Latin America, named for its dominant languages, Spanish and Portuguese, both of which (as well as French) are descended from Latin. Latin America is typically contrasted with Anglo-America where English, a Germanic language, prevails: namely, Canada and the United States (in Northern America) have predominantly British roots and are quite different in terms of linguistical, cultural, and economic situation from other countries in the Americas.
 Photo :: The Americas © FreePhotosBank.com
Geography and nomenclature
The Australian continent is the smallest and lowest-lying of the Earth's continents, having a total land area of some 8,560,000 square kilometres. Though the Commonwealth of Australia occupies much of the continent and is often mistaken for being the entire continent, Australia and adjacent islands are connected by a shallow continental shelf covering some 2,500,000 square kilometres including the Sahul Shelf and Bass Strait and half of which is less than 50 metres deep.
As Australia the country is largely comprised of a single island, and comprises most of Australia the continent, it is sometimes informally referred to as "the island continent", especially for marketing purposes. Pedagogic simplification also results in many school children being taught that the continent and the country are synonymous, resulting in the misconception being perpetuated.
Prior to the 1970s, archaeologists called the single Pleistocene landmass by the name Australasia, although this word is most often used for a wider region that includes lands like New Zealand that are not on the same continental shelf. In the early 1970s they introduced the term Greater Australia for the Pleistocene continent. Then at a 1975 conference and consequent publication, they extended the name Sahul from its previous use for just the Sahul Shelf to cover the continent. A biologist, unaware of the terms used by archaeologists, suggested in 1984 the name Meganesia, meaning "great island" or "great island-group", applying it to both the Pleistocene continent and the present-day lands, and this name has been taken up by biologists. However, others have used Meganesia with different meanings: travel writer Paul Theroux included New Zealand in his definition and others have used it for Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. Another biologist, Richard Dawkins, unimpressed with Sahul and Meganesia, coined the name Australinea in 2004
Naming of America
The earliest known use of the name America for this particular landmass dates from 1507. It appears on a globe and a large map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges. An accompanying book, Cosmographiae Introductio, explains that the name was derived from the Latinized version of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci's name, Americus Vespucius, in its feminine form, America, as the other continents all have Latin feminine names.
Vespucci's role in the naming issue, like his exploratory activity, is unclear and most probably a tale. Some sources say that he was unaware of the widespread use of his name to refer to the new landmass. Others hold that he promulgated a story that he had made a secret voyage westward and sighted land in 1491, a year before Columbus. If he did indeed make such claims, they backfired, and only served to prolong the ongoing debate on whether the "Indies" were really a new land, or just an extension of Asia.
However, as Dr. Basil Cottle (Author, Dictionary of Surnames, 1967) points out, new countries or continents are never named after a person's first name, always after their second name (with the exception of some places named after the first names of monarchs or princes, such as Carolina). Thus, America should really have become Vespucci Land or Vespuccia if the Italian explorer really gave his name to the continent. Christopher Columbus, who had first brought the region's existence to the attention of Renaissance era voyagers, had died in 1506 (believing, to the end, that he'd discovered and colonized part of India) and could not protest Waldseemüller's decision.
A few alternative theories regarding the landmass' naming have been proposed, but none of them has achieved any widespread acceptance.
One alternative, first advanced by Jules Marcou in 1875 and later recounted by novelist Jan Carew, is that the name America derives from the district of Amerrique in Nicaragua. The gold-rich district of Amerrique was purportedly visited by both Vespucci and Columbus, for whom the name became synonymous with gold. According to Marcou, Vespucci later applied the name to the New World, and even changed the spelling of his own name from Alberigo to Amerigo to reflect the importance of the discovery.
Another theory, first proposed by a Bristol antiquary and naturalist, Alfred Hudd, in 1908 was that America is derived from Richard Amerike, a merchant from Bristol, who is believed to have financed John Cabot's voyage of discovery from England to Newfoundland in 1497 as found in some documents from Westminster Abbey a few decades ago. Supposedly, Bristol fishermen had been visiting the coast of North America for at least a century before Columbus' voyage and Waldseemüller's maps are alleged to incorporate information from the early English journeys to North America. The theory holds that a variant of Amerike's name appeared on an early English map (of which however no copies survive) and that this was the true inspiration for Waldseemüller.
 Map :: North and South America (Political) 1996, Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin
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