America

Where America comes from

Learned borrowing from New Latin America, feminine Latinized form of the Italian first name of Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512). Amerigo is an Italian name derived from a Germanic language and is etymologically related to Henry and Emmerich. The earliest known use of America for the (South) American continent is on a 1507 map by Martin Waldseemüller; see Naming of the Americas for more. Although this is the most widely accepted derivation, it has also been suggested that it could originate from the name of the Amerrisque mountains in Nicaragua (from Mayan), and another disputed theory is that it derives from the surname of Richard Amerike (1440–1503), whose surname is an anglicised form of Welsh ap Meurig (“son of Meurig”), from Old Welsh Mouric, which could be a rendition of Latin Mauritius (compare Maurice).
— Wiktionary's entry for America
  • 4 syllables
  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #421 among girls — 16 babies in the first year on record.
  2. 1978
    America Olivo born
    American actress and singer
  3. 1984
    America Ferrera born
    American actress and producer
  4. 2002
    Peak, #411
    705 babies named America — more than any year before or since.
  5. 2011
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #814.
In the dictionary
  • A female given name.
Namesakes
  • America Ferrera · American actress and producer, born 1984
  • America Olivo · American actress and singer, born 1978
  • America Young · American actress, born 1984
  • America Vera Zavala · Swedish writer, born 1976
  • America Meredith · Swedish-Cherokee painter, born 1972

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.