Editing Naming of the Americas (section)

==Usage==
In contemporary English, [[North America|North]] and [[South America]] are generally considered separate [[continent]]s, and taken together are called ''the Americas'' in the plural. When conceived as a unitary continent, the form is generally ''the continent of America'' in the singular. However, without a clarifying context, singular ''America'' in English commonly refers to the [[United States of America]].<ref>"America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' ({{ISBN|0-19-214183-X}}). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 33: "[16c: from the feminine of ''Americus'', the Latinized first name of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512). The name ''America'' first appeared on a map in 1507 by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, referring to the area now called Brazil]. Since the 16c, a name of the western hemisphere, often in the plural ''Americas'' and more or less synonymous with ''the New World''. Since the 18c, a name of the United States of America. The second sense is now primary in English&nbsp;... However, the term is open to uncertainties."</ref>

Historically, in the English-speaking world, the term ''America'' could refer to a single continent until the 1950s (as in [[Hendrik Willem van Loon|Van Loon]]'s ''Geography'' of 1937): According to historians Kären Wigen and Martin W. Lewis,<ref>{{cite web| url = https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lewis-myth.html | title = The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Chapter 1) |publisher = University of California Press|accessdate=August 14, 2018}}</ref>

{{quote|While it might seem surprising to find North and South America still joined into a single continent in a book published in the United States in 1937, such a notion remained fairly common until World War II.  It cannot be coincidental that this idea served American geopolitical designs at the time, which sought both Western Hemispheric domination and disengagement from the "Old World" continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. By the 1950s, however, virtually all American geographers had come to insist that the visually distinct landmasses of North and South America deserved separate designations.}}

This shift did not seem to happen in most other cultural hemispheres on Earth, such as Romance-speaking (including France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Switzerland, [[Latin America]], and the [[Postcolonialism|postcolonial]] Romance-speaking countries of Africa), Germanic (but excluding English) speaking (including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands){{cn|date = July 2023}}, and elsewhere{{clarify|date = July 2023}}, where America is still considered a continent encompassing the North America and South America [[subcontinent]]s,<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/continents.htm | title = The Continents of the World |publisher = nationsonline.org|quote=Africa, the Americas, Antarctica, Asia, Australia together with Oceania, and Europe are considered to be Continents.|accessdate=September 2, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/contnent.htm | title = Map And Details Of All 7 Continents |publisher = worldatlas.com|quote=In some parts of the world students are taught that there are only six continents, as they combine North America and South America into one continent called the Americas.|accessdate=September 2, 2016}}</ref> as well as [[Central America]].<ref>{{cite web| url = http://central-america.org/ | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110626123645/http://central-america.org/ | url-status = usurped | archive-date = June 26, 2011 | title = CENTRAL AMERICA |publisher = central-america.org|quote=Central America is not a continent but a subcontinent since it lies within the continent America.|accessdate=September 18, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Six or Seven Continents on Earth|url=http://geography.about.com/od/learnabouttheearth/qt/qzcontinents.htm|accessdate=December 18, 2016|language=English}} "In Europe and other parts of the world, many students are taught of six continents, where North and South America are combined to form a single continent of America. Thus, these six continents are Africa, America, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, and Europe."</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Continents|url=http://www.worldometers.info/geography/continents/|accessdate=December 18, 2016|language=English}} "six-continent model (used mostly in France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Greece, and Latin America) groups together North America+South America into the single continent America."</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=AMÉRIQUE|url=http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/amerique-structure-et-milieu-geographie/|accessdate=December 18, 2016|language=French}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=America|url=http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/america_%28Dizionario-di-Storia%29/|accessdate=December 18, 2016|language=Italian}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Amerika |title=Amerika |work=Duden |publisher=Bibliographisches Institut GmbH |location=Berlin, Germany |language=de |accessdate=2019-08-19}}</ref>