Growing up, I was always taught that America was named accidentally by mapmaker Amerigo Vespucci, who sloppily signed his name in the middle of the continent. In actuality, Amerigo was an explorer (though also a mapmaker) who visited South America as early as 1499. He was the first to propose that explorers of his day had discovered not a new route to Asia but an entirely new continent. It was this somewhat contentious assertion that led a different mapmaker, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, to name the new continent after him (Waldseemüller later changed his mind, but by then Gerardus Mercator had already popularized the name).

Fast forward 400 or so years to Indianapolis, IN. My father and I are looking at his new house and he says, “you’re creative, tell me how to make my house pretty.” I’m a web designer—though I did date an architecture student back in college—and don’t really know what to say. Unfortunately, my father did help finance my BFA so I can’t let him down. I bravely suggest checking out MocoLoco, full of Modern Contemporary madness. “Actually,” my father notes with fatherly confidence, “the style of my home is ‘Usonian‘.”

Those of you reading carefully will notice that I just mentioned “Usonian”, the word for which this post is written. Yes, we’re getting close to a point.

When I do a little more research on “Usonian” architecture, I discover that its origins begin with famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The term was coined out to describe simply designed, inexpensive homes built of locally available eco-friendly materials. Large common areas and small bedrooms encouraged socialization. Unlike the monarchist Victorian or retro Neoclassical, this would be an architecture style unique to the powerful nation of the United States! And so it will be named… Usonian!

“Why Usonian, and not American?”, you may ask. And that’s probably because you, yourself, are Usonian. As mentioned a few paragraphs back, the entire new continent (two of them, actually) named back in 1499 is referred to as “America”. So “American” equally describes Canadians, Mexicans, Cubans, Bolivians, and Uruguayans as well as citizens of the United States. We (being Usonians) like to shorten “Citizens of the United States” to “Americans”, but in doing so disregard our neighbors to the north and south. Imagine if “New Yorker” only applied to Manhattanites, and you lived in Brooklyn. You’d get a little pissed, right? Maybe want to teach the uppity Estados Unidos a thing or two, eh? Well, luckily we have the CIA to keep an eye on your kind. Still, “Citizens of the United States” is so annoyingly long and we’re kind of in a hurry—being the U.S. and all.

Enter “Usonian”, short for United States of North America (USONiA). It is the skeleton key that opens those doors to humility previously locked for want of a proper lexicon. It is the word missing from countless conversations between otherwise well-meaning folks trying not to be oppressive. It is my Word for 2007 and it is my mission is to spread it far and wide, all over Usonia.

As for my father, I advised him to plant vines, keeping with the Usonian style of melding organically with the natural landscape. Then I stumbled across this quote:

“A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines.”
—Frank Lloyd Wright

Maybe I’ll just make him a website.

I realize that this post really could be condensed to a single sentence, but it wouldn’t carry the same sense of mystery and reward that following my journey of discovery would, right?