Who Is America Named After? Surely not an Italian but Richard Ameryk, a Welshman....?

The continent takes its name from Amerigo Vespucci, as proposed by cartographer Martin Waldseemüller. While he acknowledged that it had been Christopher Columbus who had first traveled to America (since the Vikings, etc.), it had been Vespucci -- in his opinion -- who had properly explored the mundus novus and discovered that it was in actual fact a continent, and not just the other side of India. Waldseemüller took the latinised form of Vespucci’s first name, Americus, but proposed to use the female form to stay in keeping with the convention set by Europa and Asia.