Who is America named after?
by 
Mariecke - winter-sleeping...
ANSWERS: 12
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After Italian map maker and merchant, Amerigo Vespucci.
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captain America???
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Miss America?
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George Washington, duh.
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Jimmy the clog dancing dog. It's a long story.
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I think it was named after Miss America.
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Amerigo Vespucci March 9th 1454--February22nd 1512 An Italian Merchant and Explorer.
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Surprise! - It's actually Richard Ameryk, a Welshman and wealthy Bristol merchant. He set foot on American soil in 1497, pre-dating Vespucci by 2 years. As the chief patron of the voyage, Richard Ameryk would have expected discoveries to be named after him. Vespucci never reached North America (only South America). All the early maps and trade were British. Nor did Vespucci ever use the term 'America' for his discovery. There's a good reason for this. New countries or continents were never named after a person's first name, but always after the second (as in Tasmania, Van Diemen's Land or the Cook Islands). America would have become Vespucci Land (or Vespuccia) if the Italian explorer had consciously given his name to it... source: The Book of General Ignorance / Stephen Fry (highly recommended!)
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I think it's named after an explorer called Amerigo Vespucci. :-)
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Amerigo Vespucci. He outfitted his own voyage to look for the Indian subcontinent (which had eluded Columbus). He sailed in 1499, seven years after Columbus first landed in the West Indies. Vespucci made trips in 1499 and 1502, and possibly again in 1503. On Vespucci's second trip, he realized he wasn't looking at India at all but at an entirely new continent. He verified it by following the coast of South America down to within 400 miles of Tierra del Fuego. A German amateur geographer named Martin Waldseemüller wrote about the new land mass Vespucci had explored: "I see no reason why anyone should justly object to calling this part ... America, after Amerigo its discoverer, a man of great ability." He printed a map with the name "America" spread across the southern continent of the New World. Thousands of copies of the map were sold across Europe. The power of the printed word is such that once that happened the name stuck and could not be changed.
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Amerigo Vespucci. The Italian explorer.
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I'm afraid the common answer - that America was named after Amerigo Vespucci - simply isn't true. After all, how many other countries/discoveries are named after the person's first name? Convention was always that such discoveries were named after a person's last name. It is likely that America was named after a wealthy merchant from Bristol, England, named Richard Ameryk (pronounced Amerik). He was the principal investor in John Cabot's voyage to the new world in 1497, and as such would have expected any major discoveries to be named after him.
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