<P> Americus Vesputius was the Latinized version of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci's name, the forename being an old Italianization (compare modern Italian Enrico) of Medieval Latin Emericus (see Saint Emeric of Hungary), from the Germanic forenames Amalric and Emmerich (however, the Old High German name Haimirich may also be a source), from Proto - Germanic * amal ("vigor, bravery") or * heim ("home") + * rik ("ruler"). </P> <P> Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454--February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer who first demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts as initially conjectured from Columbus' voyages, but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to the Europeans . </P> <P> Vespucci was apparently unaware of the use of his name to refer to the new landmass, as Waldseemüller's maps did not reach Spain until a few years after his death . Ringmann may have been misled into crediting Vespucci by the widely published Soderini Letter, a sensationalized version of one of Vespucci's actual letters reporting on the mapping of the South American coast, which glamorized his discoveries and implied that he had recognized that South America was a continent separate from Asia; in fact, it is not known what Vespucci believed on this count, and he may have died believing, like Columbus, that he had reached the East Indies in Asia rather than a new continent . Spain officially refused to accept the name America for two centuries, saying that Columbus should get credit, and Waldseemüller's later maps, after Ringmann's death, did not include it; however, usage was established when Gerardus Mercator applied the name to the entire New World in his 1538 world map . Acceptance may have been aided by the "natural poetic counterpart" that the name America made with Asia, Africa, and Europa . </P> <P> In 1875 Jules Marcou suggested that the name America derives from indigenous American languages where "Amerrique" originally named a prominent mountain range in present - day Nicaragua . </P>

Where did the name south america come from