Henrietta

Last updated on: October 4, 2006 at 10:03 pm by Fred Clark

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Henrietta 2006-10-04T22:03:41-04:00 Fred Clark

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(Or, "Un-American, continued")

Through an improbable series of events nearly 500 years ago, it fell to a German man named Martin Waldseemuller to decide what half of the world would be called.

Fortunately for us, he was not an egomaniac, so I am not now writing this from my home in the United States of Waldseemulleria (although if I were, then I would probably have been able to figure out how to get the umlaut over the 'u' in his last name).

Martin, instead, decided to name the newly confirmed hemisphere after an Italian ship's cartographer, a man who had the presence of mind to notice, on first seeing the east coast of Brazil, that he wasn't looking at the east coast of China. The Italian, however, was male, and Martin thought that the new continent(s) should have female names, since his own was itself named after a woman (that woman never actually lived, but was nonetheless fondly remembered for getting raped by a bull).

So Martin translated the Italian man's name into Latin and feminized it, christening the New World, more or less, "Henrietta."

That's the official version, anyway, and the most widely accepted theory. (You can see a picture of Martin's 1507 Henrietta map here. And Jonathan Cohen has a fascinating examination of the various alternative theories explaining how it came to be that this half of Turtle Island was renamed Henrietta and/or "perpetual wind.")

* * * * *

The name is weirdly contentious nowadays as it has come to refer to both the hemisphere as a whole, and all of its inhabitants, and also to one particular country in that hemisphere and its particular inhabitants. I don't see an obvious solution to this controversy, other than to point out that lots of words can be ambiguous due to multiple meanings and dealing with that ambiguity is part of what it means to be fluent and literate.

Residents of the United States of America refer to ourselves as "Americans." This is primarily a matter of euphony and convenience. (What other adjectival form suggests itself when the name of the country is the "United States of America"? I can't say whether or not "etats-uniens" sounds jarringly awkward and unnatural in French, but its English equivalent sure sounds that way.) This adoption of the name "Americans" precedes, and thus could not have originated from the modern American United-Statesian chauvinism that characterizes much of the contemporary culture of the United States and many of its residents.

The other half a billion residents of the Americas are also, of course, "Americans." That being the case, one of two things could happen: 1) people who for some reason prefer one or the other meaning of the word could decide that the other meaning is therefore somehow illegitimate, and that this allegedly illegitimate use of one of the word's meanings is therefore somehow insulting and/or morally suspect, and that therefore this is a matter of dispute worthy of time and attention; or 2) people could note that most words have more than one meaning and that therefore we all should strive for clarity of context when necessary and whimsical punning based on playing with such ambiguities whenever possible, such whimsy serving as a reminder of what should and should not be taken seriously and thus also serving as a reinforcement of the kind of perspective that keeps one from getting tetchy and obsessive about imaginary insults.

Option No. 1, dismayingly but predictably, seems to be the more popular choice. As Yogi Berra said upon hearing that the city of Dublin had elected a Jewish mayor, "Only in America."

* * * * *

I am pleased to see references to It's a Wonderful Life in comments to the previous post since, as I've written many times, I think the question of what America is to be hinges on the case of Bailey v. Potter.

(A friend recently asked me what I would do if I suddenly had $100 million dollars and, after the usual boilerplate about college funds for all the kiddies, my answer was this: I would open the Bailey Bros. Building & Loan. And I would call it that. And I'd hang portraits of Jimmy Stewart and Samuel S. Hinds in the lobby.)

* * * * *

Beth brings up Langston Hughes' 1938 poem "Let American Be America Again" as an example of the aspirational debate conveyed in our use of the words "American" and "un-American."

O, yes, I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!

Good stuff. (Slate's Timothy Noah isn't as impressed with Hughes' poem. Noah finds it a second-rate Whitman rip-off that he thinks is vaguely Stalinist. I disagree on both counts. I share Noah's disapproval of Hughes' attitude toward Stalin at the time this poem was written, but I don't see that attitude reflected in these lines, which I think are actually a first-rate Whitman rip-off.)

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