Amerigo Vespucci: Biography, Explorer, New World

Here is the biography of the man for whom the United States of America is named. 

But … there’s just a little more to the story. He Vespucci is credited with having found Brazil on his travels, and the land was named America in his honor. 

But when it came to making a map some years later, in the later part of the 1500s, the Mercator map (you know, the one that distorts some areas in favor of others for various reasons), called both the South American continent *and* the North American continent (which had been “discovered” by Columbus a few decades before) “America”

https://www.biography.com/history-culture/amerigo-vespucci

And more about the Mercator map:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection