Spoiler: It was a mistake by a map maker!
Although it is well documented and known that Columbus ‘discovered’ America in 1492, he maintained and believed that it was Asia. Probably the first man to realise that a new continent has been discovered was Amerigo Vespucci, a navigator who made at least two voyages to the Americas, the first time in 1499. Vespucci published two letters in 1503/1504 in which he described his voyages, and entitled Novus Mundus (thus coining the term “the New World”).
In 1507 a German cartographer, Martin Waldseemuller made one of the first world map to also include the “New World” and he was under the mistaken impression that Amerigo Vespucci had discovered the new land mass and so he named the southern part of the continent, “America”, after the feminine Latin version of Vespucci’s first name, which is Americus. And even though the mistake was rectified pretty soon, the name stuck.
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