The history of the word America is along story. It was used for the first time to refer to South America. On a map drawn in 1507, a German mapmaker called Waldseemüller identified the faint outline of South America as America, naming it after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who recognised that there was a new continent to the West (possibly visiting the West Indies, Honduras and Brazil around the turn of the sixteenth century).
