What is America named after?
What is America named after? America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer who set forth the then revolutionary concept that the lands that Christopher Columbus sailed to in 1492 were part of a separate continent.
Who found America before Columbus?
Meanwhile, on the eastern shores of the Americas, the most certain, best-documented evidence for European contact with America before Columbus is the Vikings. Icelandic sagas record that Lief Eriksson took a ship west from Greenland in the year 1001 and set up a settlement in an area they called Vinland.