America

The story

1. Proto-Indo-European*h₃emh₃-
2. Proto-Germanic*amalą
3. Proto-Indo-European*h₃reǵ-
4. Proto-Indo-European*h₃rḗǵs
5. Proto-Celtic*rīxs
6. Proto-Germanic*rīks
7. Proto-Germanic*Amalarīks
8. Proto-Indo-European*ḱey-
9. Proto-Indo-European*ḱóymos
10. Proto-Indo-European*teḱ-
11. Proto-Indo-European*tḱéytibf.
12. Proto-Indo-European*tḱey-
13. Proto-Indo-European*tḱóymos
14. Proto-Germanic*haimaz
15. Proto-Germanic*rīks
16. Proto-Germanic*Haimarīksder.?
17. ItalianAmerigo
18. New LatinAmerica
19. English todayAmerica

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).