How Did Colón Become Columbus?

Explorer's Name Varies From Country to Country
By Gerald Erichsen

       The basic explanation of that is actually fairly simple. Columbus' name in English is actually an anglicized version of the Columbus birth name. According to most accounts, Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, as Cristoforo Colombo, which is obviously much more similar to the English version than is the Spanish one.

       In most of the major European languages, Columbus' name is similar to the Italian one: It's Christophe Colomb in French, Kristoffer Kolumbus in Swedish, Christoph Kolumbus in German and Christoffel Columbus in Dutch.

       So perhaps the question that should be asked is how Cristoforo Colombo ended up as Cristóbal Colón in his adopted country of Spain. (Sometimes his first name in Spanish is rendered as Cristóval, which is pronounced the same.) Unfortunately, the answer to that appears to be lost in history. Most historical accounts indicate that Colombo changed his name to Colón when he moved to Spain and became a citizen. The reasons remain unclear, although he most likely did it to make himself sound more Spanish, just as as many European immigrants to the early United States often anglicized their last names or changed them entirely. In other languages of the Iberian Peninsula, his name has characteristics of both the Spanish and Italian versions: Cristóvão Colombo in Portuguese and Cristofor Colom in Catalan.

      Incidentally, some historians have questioned the traditional accounts surrounding Columbus's Italian origins. Some even claim that Columbus was in reality a Portuguese Jew whose real name was Salvador Fernandes Zarco.

      In any case, there's little question that Columbus' explorations were a key step in the spread of Spanish to what we now know as Latin America. The country of Colombia was named after him, as was the Costa Rican currency (the colón).

October 12 

Columbus Day

         Cristoforo Colombo or Crostóbal Colón discovered America when he was seeking a westward route to India. To his dying day, the master mariner and navigator believed he had achieved his quest, and denied discovering a new continent. While Columbus was not the first European to encounter America, he did achieve what no known previous explorer had: he sailed directly across the uncharted sea, without staying in sight of land, navigating by the stars.
       It would be a decade before Europeans realized that the lands Columbus had reached were not part of Asia but an entirely different continent. This was due to astronomical observations made by Amerigo Vespucci off the coast of South America.
      In light of Vespucci's calculations, Columbus' own denials, and the earlier voyage of Leif Ericsson, the achievement of the 1492 expedition is sometimes erroneously dismissed as insignificant. But it is important to remember that without the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Vespucci would have had no opportunity to conclude a "new continent" had been discovered, and the Americas would not have been opened to European incursion -- for good or for ill -- at that time in history. The development of American civilization, and perhaps even world civilization, could therefore have proceeded along entirely different lines.

        The first recorded celebration honoring the discovery of America by Europeans took place on October 12, 1792 in New York City. The event, which celebrated the 300th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the New World, was organized by The Society of St. Tammany (also known as the Columbian Order).
San Francisco's Italian community held their first Columbus Day celebration in 1869. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison urged citizens to participate in the the 400th anniversary celebration of Columbus' first voyage. It was during this event that the Pledge of Allegiance, written by Francis Bellamy, was recited publically for the first time.
       Colorado was the first state to observe the holiday in 1905.
In 1937, President Roosevelt proclaimed October 12 as "Columbus Day" and in 1971, President Nixon declared the second Monday of October a national holiday.


   See more information http://www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/oct12.html
   www.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/columbus.html
   www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/columbus
   www.usemb.se/Holidays/celebrate/Columbus.html