Eric the Red. Woodcut frontispiece from 1688 Icelandic publication.

Among other late 19th-century theories that sought an American origin for the name are these two: Thomas Lambert de Saint-Bris claimed that "America" derived from the name of a native empire called Amaraca which, he thought, stretched in pre-Columbian times from Peru to the mouths of the Orinoco in Venezuela and north to Yucatan. (Discovery of the Origin of the Name of America, 1888.) Eben Norton Horsford, an American manufacturing chemist, argued that "America" came from the native name of the island of Jamaica, which appears in early accounts in the variants Jamaiqua, Tamarique, Ymaiqua, and Riqua. Furthermore, Jamaica itself is a word, according to him, that had been carried to the West Indies from New England, where the Algonquin tribes had altered the difficult Icelandic name of Eric the Red, Eirikr, pronouncing it as Em-erika. (The Landfall of Leif Erikson, 1892.)

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