Understanding the name AMERICA!
Amerigo Vespucci
Richard Amerike
Christopher Columbus
John Cabot
Amalric
Himmelreich
Ommerike
Oh-ma-reeg-eh
Pilgrims Mayflower Compact
Language of the Vikings
Lands beyond Greenland
Amteric, or the Land of (Leif) Eric
“This work will fill the Rocky Mountains with tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints, and there will be joined with them the Lamanites who dwell in those mountains who will receive the gospel of Christ from the elders of Israel, and they will be united with the Church and the kingdom of God, and bring forth much good” (Discourses of Wilford Woodruff, p. 30).
“Upon the land of North America, four hundred years after the birth of our Savior and Master, there stood at least one man who knew the Lord God Almighty as a distinct personality, a Being capable of communicating Himself to man. That man was Moroni, the son of Mormon, whose testimony abides now and must abide through all the ages to come.”—George Q. Cannon, Life of Joseph Smith, p. 21.
While the Reformation and the surge for freedom were gaining momentum in Europe and England, events were transpiring that led to the rediscovery of the land of America, for God touched the heart of a mariner by the name of Christopher Columbus, who eventually pioneered a passageway to the promised land in 1492. But neither Columbus, the Nephites, nor the Jaredites were its original discoverers, nor did they establish the purpose of America’s destiny. This had already been established in the infancy of earth’s habitation. In these migrations they were but directed to the land of man’s beginning upon the earth…. In the course of time from the creation, in the days of Peleg (Gen. 10:16 (JST)), or about the year 2200 B.C., Just prior to the confusion of the languages, the single continent of land that had continued from creation was divided to produce the hemispheres as we now know them. But notwithstanding this, the geographic location of the Garden of Eden was made known to the Prophet Joseph Smith by revelation as here in the land of America, in Jackson County, Missouri, with Independence as the center place.” The Destiny of America by President Alvin R. Dyer October 1968
AMERICA
(Look Unto the Rock Whence Ye are Hewn!)
By Reverend Ken Kemble
“Hearken unto me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone and blessed him, and increased him.’ – (ISAIAH 51:1-2)
IT is generally assumed and taught that America is named after the explorer Americus Vespucci (1451-1512). Others claim that America is named after Richard Ameryke, enthusiastic supporter and financier of the explorer John Cabot (1450-1498).
Thus, America (amalric, himmelreich) literally means Kingdom of Heaven.” Reverend Ken Kemble
Amerigo Vespucci
The name America, however, is actually much older, and has been attached to this great land since the time of the Vikings and before, hundreds of years before the time of Columbus, Cabot or Vespucci.
Amerigo Vespucci March 9, 1454 – February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator, and cartographer who was born in the Republic of Florence. Sailing for Portugal around 1501–1502, Vespucci demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies were not Asia’s eastern outskirts (as initially conjectured from Columbus’ voyages) but a separate, unexplored land mass colloquially known as the New World. In 1507, the new continent was named America after the Latin version of Vespucci’s first name. Vespucci became a citizen of the Crown of Castile and died in Seville (1512). Wikipedia
Richard Amerike (or Ameryk)
“Richard ap Meryk, anglicised to Richard Amerike (or Ameryk) (c. 1440–1503) was an Anglo-Welsh merchant, royal customs officer and, at the end of his life, sheriff of Bristol. Several claims have been made for Amerike by popular writers of the late twentieth century. One was that he was the major funder of the voyage of exploration launched from Bristol by the Venetian John Cabot in 1497, and that Amerike was the owner of Cabot’s ship, the Matthew. The other claim revived a theory first proposed in 1908 by a Bristolian scholar and amateur historian, Alfred Hudd. Hudd’s theory, greatly elaborated by later writers, suggested that the continental name America was derived from Amerike’s surname in gratitude for his sponsorship of Cabot’s successful discovery expedition to the ‘New World’. However, neither claim is backed up by hard evidence, and the consensus view is that America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer.” Wikipedia
Aalric or Amalaric
Amalric or Amalaric (also Americ, Almerich, Emeric, Emerick and other variations) is a personal name derived from the tribal name Amal (referring to the Gothic Amali) and ric (Gothic reiks) meaning “ruler, prince”.
Equivalents in different languages include:
French: Amaury (surname/given name), Amalric (surname), Amaurich (surname), Maury (surname)
German: Amalrich, Emmerich
Italian: Amerigo, Arrigo
Hungarian: Imre
Latin: Amalricus, Americus, Almericus, Emericus
Greek: Emerikos
Polish: Amalaryk, Amalryk, Emeryk
Dutch: Emmerik, Amerik, Hamelink
Portuguese: Amauri, Américo, América
Spanish: Américo
Serbo-Croatian: Mirko
Wikipedia
Himmelsreich
Alternative forms
Reich der Himmel (“kingdom of the heavens; literal translation from Koine Greek: βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν (Matthew 20:1)”)
German to English: Himmelreich: kingdom of Heaven
Wiktionary
Reverend Ken Kemblen continues, “A marvelous appellation,’ wrote Miskovsky, ‘and calculated to make us thoughtful.’ Indeed, one might almost believe that this name, apparently given to our land by mere accident, was in reality prophetic, looking forward to a bright day to come.
America … Kingdom of Heaven! God’s country!
Ommerike’ (oh-meh- ric-eh)
It has been suggested that ‘America’ is derived from the old Norse word ‘Ommerike’ (oh-meh- ric-eh), that was evidently in common use among the North Atlantic sailing fraternity from around the beginning of the 11th century.
Omme means ‘out there,’ ‘final,’ or ‘ultimate’ Rike (spelled a number of ways in ancient Norse manuscripts such as rige, rega, rike, rikja, and reykja) means ‘great land’, ‘kingdom’, ’empire’. It is the equivalent of the Gaelic ‘righ’ and the German ‘reich’.
The old Norse ommerike, however, is simply a slightly corrupted form of the still more ancient Visigothic term amalric.(2)
In fact, Professor Louis Miskovsky of Oberlin College wrote in the 1920’s that America is ‘simply another form of the old Gothic Amalric’. Amal means ‘heaven’; and ric means ‘Kingdom’, just as in the old Norse rike. We find the same old word handed down to us today in the modern German term ‘Himmelreich’, used for, the Biblical ‘Kingdom of Heaven.’ (3)
Throughout our history men and women have fought all manner of trouble to come to this great land. It was a new mysterious ‘Promised Land’; a land flowing with milk and honey, prepared for us by the Hand of the Almighty. They came usually at risk of life, and sometimes lost it. But in their hearts was a righteous fervor. They wanted not only to be free, but to establish a place where they could live for God unfettered by the chains of religious persecution!
Pilgrims Mayflower Compact
The Pilgrims were Separatists (a dirty word nowadays, but highly scriptural – II Corinthians 6:17). They settled here in the early 1600’s and established a ‘Civil body Politick’, and it is made very clear in the Mayflower Compact that they did so under God, referring to God and the Christian Faith repeatedly throughout the Compact. The Compact even begins with the words ‘In the name of God, Amen.’ They lived their lives according to the Word of God, and to them this was truly America, the Kingdom of Heaven.
By the early 19th century, the United States of America was a marvel and a wonder to all the world. Our God had placed us above all the other nations of the earth, just as He had promised to do if we were obedient (Deuteronomy 28: 1). We were so blessed of God and so full of strength, liberty and bounty that one almost had to come to America and see it to believe it. And that they did; by the hundreds.
One of those who curiously came over for a visit to see this great new wonder called the United States of America was a French historian and researcher named Alexis de Tocqueville. He came to see what made America ‘tick’. In 1826, after he had been here for a tirne, he came to a conclusion. He said: ‘I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbours and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile land and boundless prairies, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ceases to be good America will cease to be great.’
Back in those days, there were indeed many mighty men of God in the pulpits across America. Men like Jonathan Mayhew, Samuel West and countless others stirred their congregations on to holy living. They preached righteousness. They preached obedience to God. They preached the Kingdom of Heaven. The pulpits of America were, as de Tocqueville states from firsthand experience, aflame!
Sadly, I see a totally different America when I look around me and when I listen to the news on the radio. Lawlessness abounds in the land of the free and home of the brave. In fact, it becomes more and more evident if we take an honest look at life in America today that we are neither free nor brave. We are in bondage. A bondage of our own making. The bondage that results from turning away from God.
Matthew 24:12, in speaking of our present day, says: And because of the abundance of lawlessness (rebellion against God’s Law), the love of many shall become cold.’
We have indeed become cold, and have lost our first love. We have become a wicked and adulterous generation, calling evil good and good evil. We accept all manner of wickedness in the name of tolerance, and are called ‘un-christian’ if we don’t. Forgiveness of the wicked seems to be the principal concern, while the cries for the re-establishment of righteousness in the land are made out to be the ravings of an ogre.
We have brazenly turned our back on God and despised the inestimable treasure of His Holy Word. We have become a nation of infidels, reprobates and debauchees. We allow our unborn to be slaughtered without the blink of an eye, and talk about it as though it were merely some trivial political issue. We accept decadent sexual perverts as normal and castigate anyone who dares suggest that they are what they are; wicked
Our nation’s Capitol is filled, even at it’s highest levels, with sexual deviants, liars and felons; and nobody even seems to care.
More and more, the lovers of righteousness and those that love God’s Holy Word are called ‘hate mongers’ and the wicked are smothered with sympathy and called simply ‘human’ or even ‘good!’
Righteousness is more and more becoming a relic of the distant past. It is now an undesirable trait. It simply doesn’t fit in to the communistic New World Order that everyone seems to want.
Just as the angry mob so long ago shouted ‘Give us Barabbas’ and ‘Crucify Jesus’, we have said ‘Away with Christ’, ‘Away with His Word’, ‘Away with Christian ideals’, and we have welcomed Barabbas with open arms! Just as in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, we have married strange wives and have begotten a whole new order, both in our society and in our churches, that is contrary to the Divine order! Just as the mighty Samson, we have laid our head in the lap of Delilah, and have been lulled to sleep by the constant subtle stroking of the world upon our mind. We have lost our vision and our strength.
America, look around. You have ceased being good; and whether you realize it or not, you are no longer great; not like you once were. And you have only yourselves to blame. De Tocqueville’s prophetic words loom ominously overhead. Your demise is sure if you do not repent with a humble and contrite heart, and look unto the Rock whence ye are hewn for grace and mercy.
The God of Heaven is the God of your fathers as far back as the history of the faith goes. He is the Lord your God, and He is a jealous God. He will not tolerate this wanton rebellion and harlotry! Submit yourselves under the Mighty Hand of God! Forsake all of this foul wickedness! Turn back to your God (‘In God We Trust!) and obey His Commandments and Statutes. Serve Him with your whole heart. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you! Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will, once again, lift us up!
For He hath said: ‘If My people, which are called by My Name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My Face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.’(II Chronicles 7:14)
Amen, Lord! Let It be! May America be truly America, Kingdom of Heaven, once again!” Reverend Ken Kemblen
Did The Vikings Name America? by Dick Wicken
A number of theories regarding the origin of the name “America” have been advanced, but none have been proved true.
First, and most generally accepted, is that the name “America” is derived from the first name of Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian mapmaker and self-promoter who explored the seacoasts of North America in the decade following Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of the New World for her most Catholic majesty, Isabella of Spain.
However, there has been no substantiation that this derivation of the name “America” is correct: and there is other evidence indicating that Amerigo Vespucci was not above turning to personal advantage an odd coincidence of phonetics in the sound of his first name and a composite word of ancient Norse invention, evidently in very current use by the North Atlantic sailing fraternity from about the year 1000 until well past the times of Columbus, Cabot and Vespucci.
The claim that the name of the entire continent, North and South, was derived from a given name is odd in itself, for common practice at the time would indicate using a man’s family name to derive an identity for a locality.
Secondly, and less generally accepted, is a theory emanating from Bristol, England, submitting that the name “America” was derived from name of one Richard Ameryke, a tax collector for King Henry VII as well as the city’s leading lumber merchant. Ameryke was an enthusiastic supporter and financial backer of the Italian navigator, John Cabot. Under letters-patent from Henry VII, dated 5 March 1496, Cabot set sail from Bristol in 1497, accompanied by his three sons.
On 24 June 1497 he sighted Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia, thus “discovering” the mainland of North America – about 600 years after the Vikings had done so.
There is no more factual substantiation of the Bristol theory of the origin of the name “America” than the highly questionable claims of Amerigo Vespucci.
Thirdly, the theory has been advanced that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of “Amalrick”.
Since these unproved – and quite possibly, unprovable – claims and theories are being advanced and accepted, it seems only right to submit a fourth unproven, equally logical and far more possible theory of the origin of the name “America”.
Therefore, it is herewith submitted that the word “America” is simply a phonetic derivation of an ancient Norse compound word “omme-rike“. In its simplest translation from the largely four-letter language of the Viking discoverers of the New World, it means “the remotest land”. The various parts of the New World were referred to in the Icelandic Sagas as Helluland (Stoneland), Markland (Woodland) and Vineland (Wineland). “Omme-rike” would have been the logical name to apply to the great land mass as a whole.
In support of this submission the following facts are listed for consideration:
The long-used and familiar name occurring in classic writings, “Ultima Thule,” designating a mysterious distant land. The meaning of these two words is singularly interesting in itself. Ultima means “the end,” “remotest,” and Thule is derived from, not Latin, but from the old Norse word “Thyle,” which means to “speak”. It is safe to assume that when the Norse word meaning speech is used, the speech being referred to is Norse. The simplest translation of “Ultima Thule” is “the farthest out land where Norse is spoken”. The obvious conclusion is simply that “Ultima Thyle” means what it says.
The analysis of the word in question, “America,” as to its possible meaning in old Norse, the language of the Vikings, still current in a slightly changed form in Iceland and in isolated parts of Norway. In old Norse, the word “America” strongly suggests two separate words, “omme” and “rike”. “Omme” means “over,” “out,” “out there,” “the end,” “final,” “furthest out,” “most remote,” “very last,” or “ultimate”
Rike” appears in lively existence today both in contemporary Norse, and its use by the Vikings to designate large land masses is amply attested to today in the names of places in the areas of Viking operations. Sometimes the word is slightly modified, but its presence is as easily recognized as its meaning. In old Norse it is pronounced rica as in America, It is spelled in a number of ways, but always pronounced the same: rige, rega, rike, rikja, reykja. In German it appears as “reich”. It always means the same thing: country, land, kingdom empire. Examples of the use of this ancient Norse word can be found in the following:
Norege, pronounced nor-reeg-eh, meaning Norway.
Sverige, pronounced sver-reeg-eh, meaning Sweden.
Frankrike, pronounced frankr-reeg-eh, meaning France.
Osterike, pronounced oste-reeg-eh, meaning Austria.
The above should be sufficient to prove that it was common practice for Vikings to use this word to designate countries.
Combined, the old Norse words “omme” and rike” would be pronounced “Oh-ma-reeg-eh” – virtually identical to “America” – and would translate into an almost identical meaning with the oft repeated classic term “Ultima Thule (Thyle)” when one considers that Norse was a spoken, not a written, tongue, and that Latin was the only written language of the time; additional inferences are obvious.
On one of Verrazzano’s maps, the coast of New England is oddly named “Norumbega”. Naturally, one cannot expect a “segener” like Verrazzano to pronounce Norse words correctly, much less spell or understand them. Basic study on the possible Norse origin of the word “Norumbega,” bastardized by an ignorant Latin, suggests much support for the idea advanced: “Norum” is nothing else than the Norse word “naerom,” meaning “near under” (and contains the stem word “om” from “omme”) and “bega” is merely a misspelled-and-mispronounced Italian version of the Norse word “rege” or “rike”. I believe it is obvious that “Norumbega” is an Italianized version of the Norse word “Naerom-rega,” “Naeromrike,” or, possibly, “Naerom-vikja” which would translate into the meaning of “the near-under regions” or “the near-under-harbor”. But its real meaning is even clearer: It is only a slightly modified version of “omme-rike”.
Finn Magnussen has established that Columbus did visit Iceland at least once in 1477, fifteen years before undertaking his first voyage to the New World. He could have easily heard of Ommerike and could even have visited there in a Norse ship.
Previous to the great plague, Iceland and Greenland – and the lands beyond – are believed to have supported a population numbering into the hundreds of thousands. One of the major ports doing business in this area was Bristol, England. It was the home base for John Cabot and source of the Bristol Theory of the origin of the name “America”. The first White man to see America was Bjarne Herulfssen, wind-blown upon it while bringing a cargo of wood (reader please make note of the cargo) from Norway to Iceland, 600 miles across open seas. It is rather naive to assume that what happened to Bjarne Herulfssen did not happen to others, Bristol traders as well as Norsemen. It is, I believe, quite safe to assume that Bristol ships had sailed the Ommerike coast long before John Cabot – if only by accident – and referred to the place by its Norse name.
The key to the main reason that the Icelanders and Greenland Norse would never have abandoned contact with Ommerike can be found in the cargo of Bjarne Herulfssen’s ship. As there are no forests on either Iceland or Greenland and wood was needed to sustain life (both to keep warm in the rigorous winter and as building material for shelter for humans and livestock as well as for building and repairing ships), a source of supply of lumber had to be maintained. It had to come either from Europe or Ommerike. Europe meant a six hundred mile voyage across the open seas, with plenty of chance of disaster from the elements, desertion of the crews on arrival and payment of some kind to secure lumber; while a voyage to Ommerike meant a two hundred and fifty mile open sea voyage from Iceland to Greenland with landfall almost certain, another two hundred and fifty miles to certain landfall on the Ommerike coast, and from there on a cold but relatively safe coastal voyage to endless forests that were free for the taking – with little chance that the crew would desert or refuse to return to Iceland.
Any present Icelander, given a similar choice of voyages, would set his sails for Ommerike, not Europe.
Vatican records in Rome are reported to establish that a Bishop Eric Gnuptson (probably Knutssen), Bishop of Greenland and neighboring regions, arrived in Ommerike in the last year of Pope Pashal II, stayed for at least one year and then returned to Rome via Greenland and Iceland. His ministry is said to have included seventeen parishes. There is also a reported Norwegian record granting the King’s authority to one George Knutsen to recruit the sons of leading Norwegian families to go to the lands beyond Greenland to search out and induce to return to the fold those colonists that had drifted off to live with the natives.
The Vatican could well have had very real practical reasons to be reluctant to place too great an importance to the Norse adventures in the New World or to publicize them. The Church’s authority always diminished in direct proportion to the northward distance from Rome. The grip on the countries around the Norwegian sea was always precarious, and any real hold in Iceland or Greenland was virtually non-existent.
Undoubtedly it seemed – and proved to be – to the Vatican’s advantage that the discovery and all ensuing “rights” to the New World be credited to the enterprise and operation of nations ruled by devout Christians.
The name of this wondrous land, Ommerike, was so well established, so totally known and accepted, such common knowledge that none of the Italian navigators, not Cabot, Vespucci or even Columbus himself, ever thought of calling the place by any other name but the already long established Ommerike – America.
The political expedients employed in this great delusion worked very well indeed, for both the nations of Spain and Portugal and for the Catholic Church. However, the days of such reasoning and shenanigans are long past and no reason remains, except indifference, to continue to deny that someplace in forgotten archives of the Vatican exist maps and written reports of Bishop Erie Knutssen and many others who visited the New World long before Columbus, voyaging over the Icelandic-Greenland route, and perhaps even as far as the islands of the Gulf of Mexico or even Mexico itself.
Bit by bit, in unexpected ways, the truth of the discovery of the New World surfaces, the last example of which is the authenticated Yale University Vinland map. There will be many more such scholastic breakthroughs and it is safe to predict that in some future rediscovered map or written report predating both the Italian Amerigo Vespucci and the Englishman Richard Ameryke, a name for the new lands will appear very close to “Ommerike”.
As stated before, these submissions are mere theories, with no more substantiation than the theories of other origins of the name “America”. Proof of them must be left to better and more thorough scholars than the writer. But the meaning of the word “omme-rike” in ancient Norse is sound, and should provide a new and different source to explore in searching out and authenticating a page of human history replete with all the ingredients of enchantment and subterfuge of a mystery novel.” Did The Vikings Name America? by Dick Wicken http://www.orange-street-church.org/text/viking.htm
“Traditional history lessons about the discovery of America also raise questions about the meaning of discovery itself. It is now universally recognized that neither Vespucci nor Columbus “discovered” America. They were of course preceded by the pre-historic Asian forebears of Native Americans, who migrated across some ice-bridge in the Bering Straits or over the stepping stones of the Aleutian Islands. A black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago, and influenced the development of Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations. The records of Scandinavian expeditions to America are found in sagas — their historic cores encrusted with additions made by every storyteller who had ever repeated them. The Icelandic Saga of Eric the Red, the settler of Greenland, which tells how Eric’s son Leif came to Vinland, was first written down in the second half of the 13th century, 250 years after Leif found a western land full of “wheatfields and vines”; from this history emerged a fanciful theory in 1930 that the origin of “America” is Scandinavian: Amt meaning “district” plus Eric, to form Amteric, or the Land of (Leif) Eric.” THE NAMING OF AMERICA: FRAGMENTS WE’VE SHORED AGAINST OURSELVES BY JONATHAN COHEN
http://themutineer.org/america-amerigo-or-amerike/
“Our Heavenly Father inspired Christopher Columbus in his discovery of America. Our Heavenly Father inspired the leaders of the renaissance period. Our Heavenly Father inspired men and caused that they would dream dreams and see visions and discover marvelous instruments and inventions which would enable them to set forth upon the oceans and to be led to the place where our Father in Heaven would have them led. Our Heavenly Father inspired the man who invented movable type, that His holy word, as found in the Bible, could be printed and disseminated widely to the people. Our Heavenly Father inspired the leaders of . . . the United States of America, that they might together, under His direction, having been raised up by God for the purpose, establish the Constitution of this country and . . . Bill of Rights, that . . . by the year of our Lord 1805 [there would be] a climate where our Heavenly Father could send into this period of mortality a choice spirit who would be known as Joseph Smith, Jr. His life’s mission would alter the course of all future events. Thus, came Joseph into the world.” Teachings of Thomas S Monson 2011 (Twenty-First Annual Joseph Smith Memorial Sermon, December 11, 1963)
