Origin of America 

It is quite possible the Chinese discovered America years before Christopher Colombus. However, before Columbus discovered a few islands in the Caribbean in 1492, the Europeans thought the world consisted of Europe, Asia, and Africa. So In 1492, when Columbus became the first European to set foot in The Bahamas, Cuba, and Haiti, the great landmass of the Western Hemisphere became known as the "New World."  

Columbus described his travels in his Columbus’ Letter written in Latin and published throughout Europe in early 1493.  Within 6 weeks, his letter was the news throughout Europe.  When Columbus discovered Honduras in Central America in 1502, he mistakenly thought he had discovered some undiscovered part of Asia, specifically India.

“Columbia” (from Columbus) would have been a more fitting name for the New World and centuries later it did become a popular name e.g.  the District of Columbia, a female personification of Columbia on certain official documents including certain prints of U.S. currency, British Columbia in Canada, and Columbia in South America, etc.  Instead, it was the Waldseemüller World Map that appeared 14 years later that determined the naming of this "New World." 

Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci and America

Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512), an Italian navigator from Florence, was a good friend of Christopher Columbus whom he met in Spain in 1491. Vespucci also sailed with Columbus' brother in 1497 up the Atlantic coast.

Vespucci was also a businessman and he began his own American voyages in 1499. He was the first European to discover the mouth of the Amazon River in South America and to reach Trinidad. And like Columbus, he believed he was sailing along the coast of Asia. However, at the end of 1500, after reaching the coast of Brazil, he realized  these lands were not part of Asia but part of the New World.  Vespucci's voyage of 1501 reinforced the theory of the spherical shape of the earth, and confirmed his revolutionary concept of the New World as a separate continent.

The word “America” was suggested by two people in 1507. The first was probably Martin Waldseemüller (1407-1521), a cosmographer and a humanist scholar from Freiburg, Germany. (In 1507 Freiburg belonged to the Hapsburg Empire of Spain).

Waldseemüller’s map of the world had an elongated mass along the left side with a supposed route to the Pacific Ocean across the Isthmus of Panama. He labeled this new landmass “America” and made reference to the fact the new territory was a province of the King of Castile. Waldseemüller also depicted and named various other locations from Río De La Plata northward, including modern-day Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Waldseemüller’s map was the first to illustrate the contours of the continents (except Australia) and the oceans.

 One thousand copies of the map were believed to have been made from a woodcut five years after Vespucci's voyage to the western continent from 1501 to 1502.

The Waldseemüller world map made an important contribution to world cartography. Waldseemüller depicted Columbus' discoveries as part of an independent continent separated from Asia by a vast expanse of ocean. However, Waldseemüller's map contradicted itself; on the insert, North and South America were connected but in the all encompassing view, they were separated by a passage of water.

Matthias Ringmann and America

The second person to suggest the word “America” was the Alsatian humanist, Matthias Ringmann. Ringmann belonged to a small group of scholars in Saint-Die in Lorraine France. (Saint-Die-des-Vosges in the Vosges mountains in north-east France is a short drive from Strasbourg in neighboring Alsace) Ringmann, like Waldseemüller, wrongly assumed that Vespucci was the true discoverer of the “New World."

In Ringmann’s geographical treatise “Introduction to Cosmography” (Cosmographiae introductio) he wrote “And now the portions of the earth have been explored and yet another continent has been discovered by Americus Vesputius. ... It is indeed a fourth part of the world. I can’t imagine why anyone could justify being against naming this continent after its discoverer, Americus.” ... . The treatise went through several printings and it and the Waldseemüller map became best sellers.

Waldseemuller later realized his mistake and published an updated world map that replaced 'America’ with Terra Incognita (Unknown Land). But it was too late; the 1000 original copies aided by the printing press had done the deed. The New World had needed a name and because Ringmann had used Waldseemüller’s map to accompany his writings, ‘America’ was permanently coined.

 After 1507 and for at least the next 100 years, most Europeans regarded the new continent as an island that blocked the coveted sea route to India and China. The extension of the name to North America came later.  

Lost then Found then Sold

Of the original thousand prints, one copy of a Waldseemüller map was kept for more than 350 years in the castle of Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg at Wolfegg (southern Germany). Considered lost for over 250 years, it was discovered in the castle in 1901. It was in excellent condition because it had been preserved in a portfolio that kept out the sun and the map was made mostly of cloth paper instead of wood paper.

In 1992 it was offered for sale, and the Library of Congress acquired the only known surviving copy for U.S. ten million dollars after making an initial down payment in 2001. The German state of Baden-Württemburg gave permission to export the map, since it was listed as "valuable national cultural property" and it was handed over officially to the U.S. government in 2004.

The Waldseemüller Map is separated into 12 separate sheets, which are arranged like a puzzle to depict the Earth in its entirety and is displayed in the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress.