b) Amerigo Vespucci

In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller and his collaborator Matthias Ringmann are credited with naming America in honor of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. This decision was made based on Vespucci’s accounts of his voyages to the New World, which Waldseemüller and Ringmann believed demonstrated that these lands were part of a separate continent, and not Asia’s eastern outskirts as initially thought. They used the name “America” on their map, the Universalis Cosmographia, to refer to the newly recognized continent. The naming of America after Amerigo Vespucci marked a pivotal moment in cartographic history and the recognition of the New World.