Why is America called America? America was named after an Italian navigator called Amerigo Vespucci. Oddly, he was not one of the discoverers of the New World, or even a famed explorer.
He did go on two voyages to the New World (1499-1500 and 1501-02) and discovered the mouths of the Amazon and explored the coast of South America.
A series of mistakes ensured that he would be immortalised in the name of the newly discovered continent. Apart from somewhat unfairly writing off Vespucci as just a businessman, in Made in America Bill Bryson tells how the mistake came about.
In 1504-5 letters of unknown origin claiming Vespucci had discovered the New World began circulating in Florence. A couple of years later, a scholar named Martin Waldseemuller decided to include a new map of the world in a revised edition of Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer and geographer (90-168).
Ptolemy's Geography - complete with errors - was the basis of all Western mapping until the 16th century.
Waldseemuller came across the letters about Vespucci's exploits and, unaware of their inaccuracy, decided to name the continent in his honour.
The name caught on and so Vespucci, rather than Christopher Columbus, John Cabot or a number of Vikings who had better claims, was honoured with a naming of a continent.