About usa plan: Naming history of United States Politics of United States

About USA
Plan:
1. Naming history of United States
2. History of United States
3. Politics of United States

Several names of the United States of America are in common use. Alternatives to the full name include the short forms "the United States" and "America", the initialisms "the U.S." and "the U.S.A.", and colloquial names include "the U.S. of A." and "the States."

It is generally accepted that the name "America" derives from the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The term dates back to 1507, when it appeared on a world map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, in honor of Vespucci, applied to the land that is now Brazil. The full name "United States of America" was first used during the American Revolutionary War, though its precise origin is a matter of contention.^[1] The newly formed union was first known as the "United Colonies", and the earliest known usage of the modern full name dates from a January 2, 1776 letter written between two military officers. The Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson, and the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, both contain the phrase "United States of America." The name was officially adopted by the second Continental Congress on September 9, 1776.

America
The earliest known use of the name "America" dates to 1505, when German poet Matthias Ringmann used it in a poem about the New World.^[2] The word is a Latinized form of the first name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass, rather than the eastern limit of Asia. On April 25, 1507, the map Universalis Cosmographia, created by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, was published alongside this poem. The map uses the label "America" for what is now known as South America. In 1538, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator used the name "America" on his own world map, applying it to the entire Western Hemisphere.^[6]
Alternative theories suggest that "America" derives from the Amerrisque Mountains of Nicaragua or from the surname of wealthy Anglo-Welsh merchant Richard Amerike.