How did America get its name?

America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer who espoused the then-revolutionary concept that the lands Christopher Columbus sailed to in 1492 were part of a separate continent.

A map in 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller was the first to depict this new continent with the name “America”, a Latinized version of “Amerigo”.

The map grew out of an ambitious project in St. Dié, France, in the early 16th century to update geographic knowledge derived from discoveries in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

Martin Waldseemüller’s large world map was the most exciting product of that research effort. He included in the map data collected by Vespucci during his 1501-1502 voyages to the New World.

Waldseemüller named the new lands “America” on his 1507 map in recognition of Vespucci’s understanding that a new continent had been discovered after the voyages of Columbus and later in the late 15th century.

An edition of 1,000 copies of the large woodcut was reportedly printed and sold, but no other documents are known to have survived. The first map, printed or manuscript, clearly depicted a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as a different ocean.

The map reflected a breakthrough in knowledge, acknowledging the newly discovered American landmass and forever changing humanity’s understanding and perception of the world.

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