North America - Wikipedia A 1621 map of North America A 1908 map of North America, published in The Harmsworth atlas and Gazetteer The Americas were named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann [15] Vespucci explored South America between 1497 and 1502, and was the first European to suggest that the Americas represented a landmass then unknown to