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"Columbia" (; ) is a historical and poetic name used for the United States of America and also as one of the names of its female personification. It has given rise to the names of many persons, places, objects, institutions, and companies; e.g., Columbia University, the District of Columbia (the national capital), and the ship ''Columbia Rediviva'', which would give its name to the Columbia River. Images of the Statue of Liberty largely displaced Columbia as the female symbol of the U.S. by around 1920.〔 〕 ''Columbia'' is a New Latin toponym, in use since the 1730s for the Thirteen Colonies. It originated from the name of Christopher Columbus and from the ending ''-ia'', common in Latin names of countries (paralleling ''Britannia'', ''Gallia'' etc.). ==History== Massachusetts Chief Justice Samuel Sewall used the name ''Columbina'' (not Columbia) for the New World in 1697.〔(J. Schlereth, "Columbia, Columbus, and Columbianism" in The Journal of American History, v. 79, no. 3 (1992), 939 )〕 The name ''Columbia'' for "America" first appeared in 1738〔(The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 8, June 1738, p. 285 )〕〔(Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Dec. 1885, pp. 159-165 )〕 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".〔(''Debates in Parliament'', Samuel Johnson. )〕 The name was perhaps first 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.〔E.g. "Gallia" for France, "Helvetia" for Switzerland, "Lusitania" for Portugal, "Caledonia" for Scotland, "Hibernia" for Ireland, "Polonia" for Poland etc.〕 In many cases, these nations were personified as pseudo-classical goddesses named with these Latin names. Located on a continent unknown to and unnamed by the Romans, "Columbia" was the closest that the Americans 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.〔(Hoyt, Albert. '' The Name 'Columbia' '', The New England Historical & Genealogical Register, July 1886, pp. 310-313. )〕 :Behold, Britannia! in thy favour'd Isle; :At distance, thou, Columbia! view thy Prince, :For ancestors renowned, for virtues more;〔''Pietas et Gratulatio Collegii Cantabrigiensis apud Novanglos'', no. xxix. Boston, Green and Russell, 1761.〕 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 (much later, the Rediviva would give its name to the Space Shuttle Columbia) *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 1865 Jules Verne's novel ''From the Earth to the Moon'', the spacecraft to the moon was fired from a giant Columbiad cannon. 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". In early WWI the image of Columbia standing over a kneeling "Doughboy" was issued in lieu of the Purple Heart Medal. She gave "to her son the accolade of the new chivalry of humanity" for injuries sustained in "the" World War. ''Columbian'' should not be confused with the adjective "Pre-Columbian", referring to a time period before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. In World War I the name "Liberty Bond" for savings bonds was heavily publicized, often with images from the Statue of Liberty. The personification of Columbia fell out of use, and she was largely replaced by Lady Liberty as a feminine allegory of the United States. 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Columbia (name)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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