United States of Columbus?

[Smartboy]

If America was discovered by Christopher Columbus, why is the continent not called Columbus instead?

[SRAYN1]

Amerigo Vespucci, a map-maker, arrived seven years after Columbus, but he was a better promoter. He realised, as Columbus never did, that a 'new world' had been found; and his accounts of his voyages sizzled with descriptions of wild sex and cannibalism among the natives. Vespucci's travel reports reached Alsace-Lorraine, where a new edition of Ptolemy's atlas of the world was being prepared in 1507. New illustrative plates were made, and when printed, the New World (Mundus Novus) mainland bore the name America. It sold well and other map-makers picked up the name. Columbus did one capital honour, though: the District of Columbia, as in Washington DC.

[tobycharkin]

And in fact the vikings got there before any other Europeans over 500 years before Columbus...!