Amerrique, the Word

 Danilo Anton

 We can begin this work in many ways and all of them would be valid. Many are the rights and wrongs the America has suffered historically since the times of the European invasion. We could talk about the sacred and green landscapes, the respect for the generosity of Mother Earth that native people had almost everywhere. We could start talking about some of those things. However, for the mere purpose of making us understand from the beginning, sio you know that we mean, we will start referring to the word, the proper name that identifies our land: America.

In their devaluation of indigenous people of the continent the invaders and their intellectual successors have endeavored to steal or hide many things, perhaps to minimize the genocide. We will start with the name “America” which in reality should be called Amerrique or Amerrisque.

This was done through a systematic"conspiracy" of “illustrious" people who viciously devoted thousands of pages to show that in fact even the name is America ia nor American.

These “indians” are so unimportant that not even their own name deserve! According to them the name America come from a Florentine gentleman named Amerigo Vespucci, who, after his travels and with the help of several generations of writers for many years, left us among other things his own name so we could finally name ourselves ...

We had a hard time realizing this great basic fraid. However, at last, as with so many things the hard truth is reappearing unstoppable. I think it was not by chance, perhaps with help of those old spirits who witnessed so much and somehow are still here.

Whatever it is, little by little things are clearing up. The old Sierra de Amerrique, the Lenca land of the "amerricanos" Amerisque lands are coming back in force..

The underlying assumption of our work is that the name America does not come not in any way from the name of Mister Vespucci and instead arose of the heart of the great continent from ancient authentically American roots.

The word actually comes from "Amerrique" Lenca-word of a Mayan dialect which means "the place where the wind always blows" or "the place of the intense life" or better "the living Earth". The name designated (and still does) a mountainous area of ​​the present Republic of Nicaragua, now called Sierra of Chontales or Chontaleña. It should be noted that in relatively recent times the name was also used to identify a native American nation that inhabited this area: the nation of the Amerriques, related to the Lencas with Maya ethnic roots. The confusion in Europe about the characteristics of these "new lands" spread to the future use and origin of the name. In the following pages we will try to show that America is an Aboriginal name, the Florentine explorer Vespucci, who is credited with "parenting" the adjective, it was actually named Alberico and Americo was a nickname (maybe a pseudonym) that was added in later times. We will try to prove in the end, that fortunately, we can correct historic inaccuracies and apparent inconsistencies starting with the name of the land.

The central work of compilation and analysis of the issue to whom we owe most of the information ewas the French geographer Jules Marcou who in the 1880's held with solid foundations, based on own observations and information from other scholars, that the name America actually comes from an area of ​​the current Republic of Nicaragua called Amerrique Mountains or Sierra de Amerrique.

Marcou work presented his work under the suggestive name of "New research on the origin of the name America", it ​​includes data and findings of several authors as Thomas Belt, Henry H. Harrisse and Lambert and build a very plausible scenario.

According to Marcou, the word Amerrique is a Mayan (Lenca) word naming the mountain range that separates Lake Nicaragua of the humid plain of the Caribbean Coast. Marcou quotes Le Plongeon, a specialist in Mayan and Central American languages, who said that the word Amerrique meant "the land where the wind blows". He added that sometimes the “ique”, “ik” and “ika” meant not only "wind" or "air", but also "the spirit that breathes" or simply “life”. Accordingly, the word Amerrique could also mean "the place of the spirit that breathes", or perhaps "the living earth".

It is noteworthy that Amerrique appears designated as such in numerous maps, (eg in the Larousse dictionary and others), and in some studies and references. According to Thomas Belt, who was a geologist who worked in the area in the 1870s, the chain that divides the basin of Nicaragua River Blewfields river (sic; the current name is Bluefields) is called "Sierra Amerrique "or" Amerrique range". This area coincides with a number of gold deposits that the author of this work was able to visit in late 1980. According to Belt, the region of the Sierra Amerrique was formerly inhabited by a Lenca nation marginally related with the Mayan people. The president of Nicaragua, Don. Ad. Cardenas, meanwhile, in a letter sent to Don Manuel Peralta on May 22, 1886, stated that this mountain range was inhabited by "a tribe of Indians called the Amerriques, now reduced to a small number of individuals" but that it was "formerly of some importance." Mr. Cardenas added that "these Indians Amerriques have had more or less frequent communication with Cape Gracias a Dios and the entire coast of the Mosquitos" According to Belt, quoted by Marcou, the similarity between the name of the Sierra and the continent appeared to be very strange.

Moreover, it is interesting to remember that the name Vespucci was Alberico (in Italian) or Albericus (in Latin). In XVI century italian language all Americo related patronimics (including Amerigo, Americus or Americo), were not used as a derivative of Alberico. Moreover, before the publication of the map of Jean Basin in Saint-Die, none of these appellations (Amerigo, Americus, Américo) appear in any document of recognized authenticity. It appears then that Alberico Vespucci only became known as "Americo" in the decade of 1500- 1510, most likely around 1505.

What happened to Vespucci at that time that was important enough to change his name to from Alberico to Américo ? The answer to this question is probably related to something that happened after own Vespucci travels beyond the western ocean. During his first voyage, from 1497-1498, Vespucci visited the Mosquito Coast in Nicaragua near Cape Gracias a Dios and then at Cape Camaron on the southern coast of Honduras. In those places, the locals had a certain amount of gold, probably from the Sierra de Amerrique. Surely, Alberico Vespucci was among the first Europeans to hear the name Amerrique referred to an area of ​​the mainland. Probably the name was also heard by the explorers Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, Juan de la Cosa and Juan Díaz de Solís who visited the Nicaraguan coast in 1498. The name went to Europe with the sailors that accompanied these expeditions and its use became widespread.  

Translated from "Amerrique, los Huérfanos del Paraíso", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones