3. America, It's Older Than You Think: At Least The Name Is, Anyway.

"Teach your children well"

Curiously, few of us have a soupçon of the origins of the word "America." As Americans, we were taught from very early on (around kindergarten), that our beloved country was named after the Florentine merchant explorer-navigator, Amerigo Vespucci. We were taught that he went, first, to France and, then, to Seville to work as a banker for the Medici family. Later, we were told that he was involved in preparing Columbus' second trip to the "Indes" (more about the origins of that word some other time). Further, we learned that he got to know ol' Cristobal pretty well; further, that Amerigo, himself, took several trips West under the auspices of the Spanish, Portuguese and French monarchies.

However, it was the publication of letters attributed to him "Quattuor Americi navigationes" and "Mundus Novus," or "Epistola Alberici de Novo Mundo," that brought him to the attention of the German humanist, Martin Waldseemüller who published Amerigo's four letters, in 1507, (actually, only one can be verifiably attributed to him), about his four trips to the newly emerging world, of which only two can be documented; one for Spain and one for Portugal. Waldseemüller published Vespucci's letters in back of his own pamphlet, "Cosmographiae Indroductio," in which he declared that the New World would be named "ab Americo Inventore . . . quasi Americi terram sive Americam" ("from Amerigo the discoverer . . . as if it were the land of Americus or America"). Originally, the name only applied to the Southern Continent, however, later, it would be appended to the North continent as well.

Enough! Any grammar school kid could have garnered the same information. So, what's new? Well, for starters, where does the name Amerigo come from? Amerigo V., like any good Italian from that era was named after a Catholic saint. However, he wasn't named after an Italian saint but a Hungarian one, St. Imre, ak.a., Henricus, Emeric, Emerick, Emmerich, Emericus or Americus (from which the Italian Amerigo emerges), He was the hapless son of the founder of the modern state of Hungary, St. Stephen. Not done, yet, I'm afraid.

So, where did the Hungarians get the name Imre in the first place?

Well, if you know a little history you would have jumped to the head of the class and said that there are many Turkic words in Hungarian derived from their close, ethnic and linguistic connections that the ancient Hungarians had with the Turks. The name Imre evolved from the German Emmery which evolved from the Turkic "Emir" as in "chief." The Turks, in turn, got in from the Arabic "Amir,' a title given to the descendants of Muhammad through his daughter, Fatima Zahra.

And, there is still more.

The Arabic "Amir" or "Ameer," came from a still older and more ancient culture and civilization: Ancient Egypt... From now on, you won't find any of this in your cursory searches in LexisNexis, Google or anywhere else, except in a grammar of Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs. I would recommend Sir Alan Gardiner's classic (Oxford University Press) text; Chapter V, para 79. "Imy-r" Overseer (as in the king's main administrator, or subsequent little administrators), literally "One-who-is-in-the-mouth," The glyphs are of an owl and an oval that are supposed to represent a mouth. The phonetic equivalent had originally been an ox tongue (get it, in the mouth?). Therefore the word, America, fully qualifies as, what my fellow French asylum inmates would characterize, a "Signifiant Flottant." ................. N'est-ce pas? No more deconstructionist nonsense, I promise.

These are the things that I think up, here in the sanatorium. It's either write (or any other occupational therapy), or go outside and listen to the tomato plants nudge their way skyward. The fear, however, that I will be forced outside to..... err, work, is making me think that I should alter my professional designation from an arranger of disparate words and symbols, to say, a philosopher. That way, I can wile away my time doing Quiet Sitting without trepidation. It would, also, go a long way to explain my apparent lifelong impecuniousness existence (Pecus = cattle, the Romans first bartered with cows). And, eventually, before I flow back into the void, I can declare, like Socrates, that, although others may argue to the contrary, I am firm in the conviction that I know absolutely nothing.

I had a louche colleague, once, who confided in me his worst fears. "The world," he said, "is coming to an end, soon." I'm a nice guy. (Do you know the origins of the word, "nice"? It means "stupid.") I didn't want to hurt him with ridicule or sarcasm, so I said, "Really?" and, "How did you come up with that?"

"The world, as we know it, will start to end on January the 20th, 2000," he said. "Well how do you know that?" I replied. "Because of the Millennium Bug," he whispered ever so softly.

I ran into this same fellow, here, in the asylum a few years ago before he was discharged for being too sane to stay. I was able to get his attention for a few minutes one lovely afternoon as we had our supervised walks through the Garden. "Tell me," I asked, "What do you think, now, that 2000 and 2001 have come and gone and the world is still here, and no Millennium Bug appeared?"

Well, this fellow nearly jumped out of his skin. "Fool!" he said, "Nice fool," he added for emphasis, "the world began its decline on January 20th, 2000, just as I predicted."

"But, “I stuttered, triumphantly, you may be right about the end of our civilization, but you were wrong about the Millennium Bug!" He stared at me the best he could with his wandering eyes, "Very nice fool,” he said raising his voice a full fifth (subtonic) above his usual sotto voce, "The Millennium Bug did come. It's right here hiding among the Bushes."

Which brings me to the Patriot Act: Boswell quotes Dr. Johnson as having defined patriotism as the last refuge for scoundrels. If anyone should know the meaning of patriotism it should be Johnson, after all he wrote the first English dictionary. Having said that, do you think that would have gotten him on the No-fly list?

I have to go now; my attendant is coming to take me to my class on the "Ethics of Survival". I can't see her but I can smell her perfume. She's the only person here who wears Guerlain's "Mitsouko." At nearly a thousand dollars an ounce and with very few stores in America that sell it, I asked her how she came by it and how she could afford it.

"Oh," she quipped, "My boyfriend is a custom's officer."