Columbia (name) - History

History

The name Columbia for "America" (in the sense of "European colonies in the New World") first appeared in 1738 in the weekly publication of the debates of the British Parliament in Edward Cave's The Gentleman's Magazine. Publication of Parliamentary debates was technically illegal, so the debates were issued under the thin disguise of Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput, and fictitious names were used for most individuals and placenames found in the record. Most of these were transparent anagrams or similar distortions of the real names; some few were taken directly from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels; and a few others were classical or neoclassical in style. Such were Ierne for Ireland, Iberia for Spain, Noveborac for New York (from Eboracum, the Roman name for York), and Columbia for America—at the time used in the sense of "European colonies in the New World".

The name appears to have been coined by Samuel Johnson, thought to have been the author of an introductory essay (in which "Columbia" already appears) which explained the conceit of substituting "Lilliputian" for English names; Johnson also wrote down the Debates from 1740 to 1743. The name continued to appear in The Gentleman's Magazine until December 1746. Columbia is an obvious calque on America, substituting the base of the surname of the discoverer Christopher Columbus for the base of the given name of the somewhat less well-known Americus Vespucius.

As the debates of Parliament, many of whose decisions directly affected the colonies, were distributed and closely followed in the British colonies in America, the name "Columbia" would have been familiar to the United States' founding generation.

In the second half of the 18th century, the American colonists were beginning to acquire a sense of having an identity distinct from that of their British cousins on the other side of the ocean. At that time, it was common for European countries to use a Latin name in formal or poetical contexts to confer an additional degree of respectability on the country concerned. In many cases, these nations were personified as pseudo-classical goddesses named with these Latin names. The use of "Columbia" was, in effect, the closest which the Americans, located in a continent unknown to and unnamed by the Romans, could come to emulating this custom.

By the time of the Revolution, the name Columbia had lost the comic overtone of its "Lilliputian" origins and had become established as an alternative, or poetic name for America. While the name America is necessarily scanned with four syllables, according to 18th-century rules of English versification Columbia was normally scanned with three, which is often more metrically convenient. The name appears, for instance, in a collection of complimentary poems written by Harvard graduates in 1761, on the occasion of the marriage and coronation of King George III.

Behold, Britannia! in thy favour'd Isle;

At distance, thou, Columbia! view thy Prince,

For ancestors renowned, for virtues more;

The name "Columbia" rapidly came to be applied to a variety of items reflecting American identity. A ship built in Massachusetts in 1773, received the name Columbia; it later became famous as an exploring ship, and lent its name to new "Columbias."

No serious consideration was given to using the name Columbia as an official name for the independent United States, but with independence the name became popular and was given to many counties, townships, and towns, as well as other institutions, e.g.:

• In 1784, the former King's College in New York City had its name changed to Columbia College, which became the nucleus of the present-day Columbia University.
• In 1786, South Carolina gave the name "Columbia" to its new capital city. Columbia is also the name of at least nineteen other towns in the United States.
• In 1791, three commissioners appointed by President Washington named the area destined for the seat of the U.S. government "the Territory of Columbia"; it was subsequently (1801) organized as the District of Columbia.
• In 1792, the Columbia Rediviva sailing ship gave its name to the Columbia River in the American Northwest.
• In 1798, Joseph Hopkinson wrote lyrics for Philip Phile's 1789 inaugural "President's March" under the new title of "Hail, Columbia." Once used as de facto national anthem of the United States, it is now used as the entrance march of the Vice President of the United States.

In part, the more frequent usage of the name Columbia reflected a rising American neoclassicism, exemplified in the tendency to use Roman terms and symbols. The selection of the eagle as the national bird, the use of the term Senate to describe the upper house of Congress, and the naming of Capitol Hill and the Capitol building were all conscious evocations of Roman precedents.

The adjective Columbian has been used to mean "of or from the United States of America", for instance in the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, held in Chicago, Illinois. Occasionally proposed as an alternative word for "American", Columbian in this sense has not re-entered general English use; rather, the meaning of Columbian was fixed as pertaining to the South American country of this name.

Columbian should not be confused with the adjective "Pre-Columbian", referring to a time period before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and other European explorers in the Americas.

After the World Wars, the personification of Columbia fell out of use, and she has largely been replaced by Lady Liberty as a feminine allegory of the United States. It is noteworthy that when Columbia Pictures adopted Columbia as its logo in 1924, she was (and still is) depicted as bearing a torch – similar to the Statue of Liberty, and unlike 19th Century depictions of Columbia.